Stuck on the Slow Path
by sarkywoman
Summary: When the Doctor's stranded on Earth after 'LotTL', Jack is determined to make his stay with Torchwood a comfortable one, despite what the Rift has in store. PRIMARILY Jack/Doctor. Also Jack/Ianto, Ianto/Doctor, Owen/Gwen, Ianto/Toshiko, Rhys/Gwen.
1. Stuck on the Slow Path

The Slow Path

sarkywoman./70708.html#cutid1

**Stuck On The Slow Path**

Jack spent three days helping the Doctor with the Tardis. They had to rig Jack's vortex manipulator to transport the machine off of the Valiant, because the Doctor was unable to get it moving. The Time Lord's distress was palpable and so many times Jack wanted to hug him and say it would be alright. Unfortunately, after three days had passed and the Tardis remained a Paradox Machine, it became clear that the Doctor would be stuck on the slow path for the foreseeable future and Jack didn't know how he could possibly cushion that blow. It had been hard enough for him, a mere Agent of Time, how much worse would it be for a Lord?

"I might have some parts at the Hub," he suggested tentatively. He wasn't very optimistic that Torchwood possessed the items required by the Tardis, but at least the search would drag the Doctor from his mutilated machine. The pulsing red walls and sickening noise of the Paradox Machine were making Jack uncomfortable, who knew what the environment was doing to the Doctor's psyche, bonded to the Tardis as he was?

"I expect your team will probably be wondering where you got to," the Doctor said, aiming for his usual cheer but failing. It was impossible to be happy in the blood-red glow. It was like the Master had warped the soul of the Tardis. At least the Doctor had made it through the year with his sanity intact, although whether that would hold was another thing altogether.

Without any more conversation, Jack wired the vortex manipulator up to the Paradox Machine. The Doctor worked his magic with the sonic screwdriver and the whole thing was relocated to the Cardiff rift.

The night air was refreshing and Jack breathed it in deep, feeling like he'd escaped from a prison. The Doctor followed him out, locking the door and tucking the key into the pocket of his long, brown coat. He glanced around, looking a little lost. Impulsively Jack took his hand. It was a measure of the Doctor's state of mind that he allowed the friendly touch.

"I'm assuming you don't want me to introduce you to Torchwood as the Doctor." He was still officially their enemy, after all.

"Doctor John Smith is generally what I use." The most normal human name he could conjure to mind. How predictable. He'd clearly never had training in subterfuge.

Before Jack could comment on the ill-fitting and transparent pseudonym, his phone rang. He glanced at the screen before answering. It was Toshiko. Time to stop being a Companion and start being a Leader. "Hello?"

"Jack! Oh god, Jack!" He held his phone away from his ear until she calmed down and became less shrill. "Where have you been? We saw you at the President's assassination and then nothing for weeks…"

"Now there's an unwelcome claim to fame," Jack muttered. "Hang on, I'll be down in a minute. We'll talk then."

He ended the call and put his phone back in his coat pocket. He noticed the Doctor was still staring into the night sky, possibly looking at the stars that now lay out of his reach. Wanting to pull him back to Earth and keep him close, Jack squeezed his hand gently. "Hey, you ready to meet the Torchwood team?"

The Time Lord sighed. "I'll need to talk to Martha…" Another sigh. The world on the Doctor's shoulders seemed especially heavy tonight. "It might take me a while to fix up the Tardis."

"You can stay with me," Jack offered. The thought of it made his stomach twist in ways both pleasant and unpleasant.

"I'll stay in the Tardis." Jack glanced back at the phone box and fancied he could see the red light pulsating in the windows.

"I really don't think that's a good idea, Doctor." He started to walk to the main entrance of the Hub, still holding the Doctor's hand. "It's wrong and I don't think you should spend too much time around it."

"And spending time with you is somehow better?" The Doctor drew his hand from Jack's grip and rubbed at his eyes wearily. "I'm sorry, Jack. That wasn't fair. I'm just tired."

Jack said nothing until they were standing outside the door to Torchwood Headquarters. "Am I still wrong, then?"

"I'm working on it. It's my problem. You can't help what you are, I just have to accept the fact that you feel a little… odd."

Jack grinned as he opened the door to reception. "But Doc, you've barely felt me at all."

He held the door open for the Doctor, then both men stepped into the reception room. Gwen, Ianto, Owen and Toshiko all stood there, staring as though Jack was an apparition. Ianto was the first to step forward. "Jack?"

Wanting to avoid confrontation and complicated explanations, Jack smiled widely at them. "In the flesh, wanna check?" A cheeky leer, then he was moving past them, dragging the Doctor with him into the main area of the Hub.

"Welcome to Torchwood," Jack said proudly.

The Doctor looked around indifferently, his gaze lingering on certain alien artefacts. "It's not as shiny as the old one."

"But also not as evil," Jack pointed out, his enthusiasm dented slightly.

"There is that, I suppose," the Doctor said begrudgingly.

"Come on, let's head to the vaults and see what's there." Secretly and with more than a little guilt, Jack hoped Torchwood possessed none of the parts, so the Doctor would have to stay. There would be something deeply gratifying about having the Doctor in his territory for a change. He'd have Torchwood and the Doctor, all at once.

"Quite a collection you have here," the Doctor said disapprovingly. The Time Lord sifted through the alien technology on the shelves and in boxes. Jack made a mental note of the objects that were discarded carelessly and he also paid special attention to the artefacts handled with extreme caution. Perhaps he ought to procure some 'Handle With Care' stickers for when his team inevitably came stampeding through here like bulls on an important mission in an alien china shop.

"Anything useful?"

"Bits and pieces that could be handy if I fix them up and connect them to a hundred other things we don't have."

The Doctor buried his head in his hands and let out a muffled yell of frustration. Jack went and knelt beside the Time Lord, hoping his presence was a comfort to the man. A movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention and he snapped his gaze to the doorway, where Toshiko was standing watching them. A glare sent her scurrying off.

"I can't take the slow path right now Jack, I just can't."

A few sniffs acted as the prelude to five minutes of sobbing. Jack couldn't bear space between them any longer and he wrapped his arms around the crying Doctor. He knew this despair wasn't entirely due to being stuck in Cardiff in 2007. The Doctor had not grieved at all for the Master since his initial outburst on the Valiant and Jack suspected there was a lot of pain being bottled up. He rubbed the Doctor's back in gentle circles until the Time Lord pulled away and climbed to his feet.

"Sorry Jack. It's not like me to fall apart like this."

"Don't worry about it." Jack stood up but stepped back out of the Doctor's personal space. "You know, all sorts of things turn up in the Rift. If the parts can be found, Torchwood will find them first. I promise." He'd use all the resources his position commanded to get the Doctor out of this depression.

"It could take years," the Doctor said gloomily, tapping his sonic screwdriver against the wall.

"It won't." Jack's confident assertion had absolutely no reason behind it. He simply could not imagine the Doctor staying in one place for any serious amount of time. No matter how much he wanted it to happen, his imagination just wasn't that good.

The sound of a throat being cleared in the doorway brought their attention to Ianto. "Would your guest like some refreshment? Tea or coffee?"

"I'd appreciate a cup of tea, thank you."

It was as good a time as any to make introductions. "Doctor John Smith will be working with us for a while. Doctor, this is Ianto Jones, my most versatile employee."

"Nice to meet you." The Doctor shook Ianto's hand. Although both men were smiling politely, Jack could see the veiled suspicion in their eyes as they evaluated one another.

"Likewise. Sugar in your tea?"

"Please."

When Ianto left them, the Doctor seemed to be smirking.

"What?"

"A pretty man in a suit described as versatile by Jack Harkness? Does the poor man even have a real job description or is his title something crass like 'personal assistant'?"

"Do you really think I would employ someone for purely sexual purposes?" Jack asked, concerned that the Doctor had such low expectations of him. The fact that he'd called Ianto pretty could be dissected and over-analysed later.

"Well, I'd have to taste the tea to be sure," the Doctor said with amusement in his dark eyes.

Usually, Jack would have defended his and Ianto's reputations, but it was so nice to see the Doctor on his way to a better mood that he just allowed the implied accusation. "Come on, I'll introduce you to the rest of the team."

Hands in pockets, they both walked up into the main area of the Hub. Ianto was off making the tea, Toshiko was tapping away on her computer and Gwen was chatting with Owen at the briefing table. When they saw Jack and the Doctor though, they stopped speaking and Toshiko stopped working. Apart from the sounds of Ianto pottering about in the kitchen area, there was silence as they waited for Jack to explain the mysteries he'd produced in the past weeks. After a few seconds of consideration, Jack decided it would be safer to give out as little information as possible.

"This is Doctor John Smith. The incident with the Prime Minister has made it necessary for his presence here. He'll be working with us indefinitely." The team seemed to take this in their stride, with minimal curious glancing at the Doctor. Stranger things happened in Torchwood on a daily basis. Ianto walked in with a tray of mugs and dealt out tea to his grateful co-workers.

"So Harry Saxon was an alien, then?"

Jack nodded in response to Owen's question. He looked sidelong at the Doctor, worried that the subject might be upsetting the Time Lord. If it was, the Doctor didn't show it. He was watching Jack's team calmly and the Captain knew that he was appraising them, wondering if they could be trusted. Jack had been through a similar process during his early days on board the Tardis. The Doctor looked different, but his wariness remained the same. Once he decided you were worth it he would pretend to be happy and human, but until then he would assess you with a detached superiority. Right now, that gaze had settled on Gwen and Owen, though they had not noticed it yet.

"What sort of an alien was he, Jack? Are there more out there like him? How much danger are we in?" Gwen was voicing sensible concerns, but right now they were not easy questions.

"None. His species are gone now, we've got nothing to worry about." That had been a bit too blunt, judging from the Doctor's sharp intake of breath, quickly disguised with the determined sipping of tea. Toshiko wandered down the steps to better participate in the discussion.

"But what was he? Was it a man possessed by an alien spirit? A shape-shifter? He looked human on the television broadcast…"

To Jack's surprise, the Doctor chose to speak up on the matter. "He was from a planet called Gallifrey. The Gallifreyans look like humans, but there are internal biological differences."

There was a pause before Ianto made a hesitant enquiry.

"If you don't mind my asking sir, what exactly are you a doctor of?"

"Ooh, all sorts," the Doctor said with a smile. Ianto raised an eyebrow, distinctly unimpressed with the evasive answer.

"That's his friendly way of saying his personal information is classified," Jack said with a meaningful look at the Doctor. It would be interesting to see if the Doctor could make any pretence at professionalism while he was here.

"So is he from… higher up?" Toshiko said with a brief gesture supposed to indicate the mysterious upper levels of the Torchwood organisation.

"Classified," Jack said, pre-empting whatever rambling answer the Doctor might have given.

"So is that where you went?" Gwen asked. "You went off on a classified mission to deal with the alien Prime Minister?"

Jack nodded. "That's right. If I could say more I would, but it's all on a strictly need-to-know basis. Since the situation has been resolved, nobody needs to know." He tried to steer the conversation away from recent events. "What's rift activity been like while I've been gone?"

"A bit odd, actually," Owen said. He picked up some reports from the table and brought them over for Jack's perusal. "There was a brief surge here, but that dissipated quicker than I've ever seen."

The Doctor put on his thick-framed glasses and leaned over to get a better look at the graphs. "Oh, that'll be me, ignore that."

Jack chuckled. "You only love me for my Rift."

The Doctor smiled slightly then trailed his finger along the graph line. "This one here would be…"

"Now that," Owen interrupted, "would be the biggest instance of Rift activity we've ever seen, including the time it was open."

Jack hissed in a deep breath. Oh well, he was bound to find out at some point. Best to get it over with. He faced the Doctor's glare. It was similar to the one he'd received when he'd mentioned working for Torchwood.

"You _opened_ the Rift?"

"I was against it personally, but I suppose I'm responsible."

The Doctor glanced over at Jack's team, seeing them fidget and look around awkwardly. "Oh, I see. They did it."

"But they're my responsibility," Jack said, preparing himself to face the Doctor's disappointment once again.

"And you're mine. Remember?" The Doctor sighed. "I suppose that makes this whole thing my fault indirectly." He went back to the graph, staring intently at the massive spike of activity. Before Jack could say anything, the Time Lord had switched subject again. "Ah, I know what this is."

"The Toclafane?" Jack guessed. It was weird, being one of the few humans who remembered the rain of metallic death.

"That's part of it. The rest is everything else. The paradox machine, the resetting of reality, it all caused instability in the Rift. Should settle down to its usual level with time." He sipped at his cooling tea, apparently ignorant of Jack's team staring at him. They weren't used to people other than Jack having that sort of knowledge. Then he beamed at Jack. "Do you have an office or something? I've got a few questions to ask. Classified business."

"Oh. Um, yeah sure." He went up the stairs, trusting the Doctor would follow. When they were both in his office he closed the door and gestured for the Doctor to take a seat. "So what's up?"

The Doctor sat down in the chair and pinned Jack with a serious look. "Tell me what happened."

"You mean with the Rift opening? It's kind of a long story." And he didn't particularly want to explain how his most trustworthy friends had turned on him in an instant.

"I'm not going anywhere," the Doctor said with a shrug that looked too casual to be anything but forced. "At least for the time being. So tell me what happened."

"It's not really important…" Jack tried, wincing as soon as he heard himself say it. The Doctor didn't even dignify that with a response, so Jack really had no choice.

He started with his brief foray into history with Toshiko.

"A localised time portal? Well now that's interesting. I wonder if there are many others in the vicinity of the Rift…"

He skimmed over his encounter with the real Captain Jack Harkness, though the Doctor's sympathetic pat on the shoulder showed he understood the significance. Once he'd reached the part of his and Toshiko's return, Jack had to ask. "Don't you want to know my real name? I thought you'd ask."

"That would be a bit hypocritical of me, wouldn't it?" The Doctor smiled slightly. "When we met I was the Doctor and you were Jack. That's how I knew you, it's how you knew me. If I gave you another name for me now, would you stop thinking of me as the Doctor?"

"Probably not," Jack conceded. "I can't call you John. It just doesn't work for me at all. You're not a John Smith."

"No? What would you choose for me then?"

"I don't know. Let me get back to you on that."

So he continued on with his story, making sure to include the great emotional stress his team were under and how whatever they dealt with had exploited their vulnerabilities to trick them into opening the Rift.

"And what about you?"

"Me? I didn't see anything." This was just as well, because if the Doctor had appeared before him and said 'open the rift', Jack would have done it in a heartbeat. Even if it had been for the best though, the immortal couldn't help but wonder why he hadn't seen a vision. Wasn't he human enough for these things to work on him anymore? The thought scared him.

He continued with his story, understating his own efforts to stop the team. The Doctor had looked sympathetic up to this point, but now he seemed unconvinced. "Why are you protecting them from me? What do you think I would do to them?"

Jack sighed. Was he that bad at lying? To the Doctor, perhaps. "I don't want you to get the wrong idea about them. They're brilliant people, I wouldn't replace any of them."

"What about the one that shot you?" Jack hoped that was protectiveness in the Doctor's voice.

"Owen can be a bit of an asshole, but he'd been through a lot. His girlfriend got swallowed up by the Rift for god's sake and he tried to commit suicide with a Weevil. This job gets to people. Sometimes I think humans aren't psychologically equipped to deal with this stuff."

"What about you? You must be the most long-lived Torchwood employee there is. Doesn't it get to you?"

Jack shrugged. It did get to him, some days, but he forced himself to be fine. He had a long life ahead of him, he knew he had to learn to cope. "I can handle it."

The Doctor chewed his lip thoughtfully, unaware of how much Jack wanted to kiss him then. When he said nothing, Jack went ahead with his tale of woe. The Doctor continued his silence through the rest of the story, letting Jack speak without interruption.

"…so I jumped, grabbed the Tardis, then we all know what happened next. Oh, that reminds me. Don't talk about my personal life with the team. They don't know much about me and I think it's better that way. All they know is that I'm immortal and that I served in the wars." The Doctor was still quiet, staring at nothing in particular on the floor. Jack leant forward. "Doctor?"

"And then you went from one hell to another…" the Doctor murmured sadly, turning his dark eyes up to Jack. "I'm so sorry. Life's been such a chore for you."

Jack smiled, hoping to ease the Doctor's mind. "Nah. I enjoyed a lot of it. A peaceful day, now that would be boring." His smile turned to a charming leer. "Unless someone was willing to pass the time with me."

The Doctor sighed, but the mood had clearly been lightened. "Thought you were sleeping with that Ianto chap?"

"Only in a casual way. We're not exclusive, so I can flirt all I want." Which wasn't to say Ianto wouldn't get a tiny bit jealous, but jealousy could lead to great sex.

The Doctor's gaze went back to the floor. "What's down there?" he asked, nodding towards the large gap.

"My bedroom. Yours too, if you like. It's small, but I have a sofa I can sleep on and the bed's comfortable enough."

"You sleep under the base?" Jack hadn't expected the concern in the Doctor's voice. For him the Hub was home now, it was familiar and comforting.

"What's wrong with that?" he asked, a tad defensively.

"Well, nothing I suppose. I just expected a flat or apartment or something. Somewhere outside in the bustle of Cardiff. I didn't think your life would revolve around your alien-hunting."

"I was waiting for you," Jack said by way of explanation. "I didn't like to be away in case you showed up. It took me a hundred years to get this close, I wasn't about to miss you just because I took an apartment fifteen minutes away. Anyway, I'm used to it now. And it does mean I can lay in without being late for work." He grinned. "We both can."

"You're giving me a job too?" the Doctor asked with one eyebrow raised. Jack realised he might have been a little presumptuous in thinking the Doctor would work for Torchwood. For him.

"It's on offer if you want. Only we don't know how long you'll be here and you might need some cash. Torchwood could use your expertise, too. I know it's kind of weird, considering you're officially our number one enemy and all that, but it's something to consider."

"What would I have to do?" the Doctor asked, looking a little worried at the idea of working for a living.

"Just let me know whatever you know about the creatures we come into contact with. I've got a fair bit of experience to call on, but I don't always have the answers." The Doctor still looked dubious, so Jack played it dirty. "You could also help us deal with threats without violence. At the moment we're pretty much limited to shooting alien threats and I'm not entirely comfortable with it. You could help us find peaceful ways to resolve conflicts." Jack watched with satisfaction as the Doctor's expression went from doubt to resolve.

"Alright. What's the pay like?"

"Very good," Jack assured him. Even better for the Doctor, who wouldn't be put on the official payroll. Jack would just draw something from Torchwood's ridiculously large budget as subtly as he could.

"Do I get to boss anybody around?"

"Well…" Jack considered this. "Since you'll boss people around whether I say yes or no, I might as well make it an official privilege. The team are under the impression you're my superior anyway, we might as well let that continue."

"So I can boss you around as well?" the Doctor looked positively gleeful.

"You say it like you've never given me an order in your life. You know if you say 'jump' I say 'how high, Doctor sir'. I don't need an official job title to know my place with you."

The Doctor sighed and shook his head, but Jack didn't care. The Time Lord needed someone consistent and through the warping of reality that had made him immortal, Jack could be that someone. The Doctor would never admit he wanted that stability in a person but then he never admitted anything.

He checked his watch. "It's late. I'm gonna send everyone home. I don't like it when they work too hard."

"This job's sounding better and better," the Doctor said with a grin as Jack left the office. Maybe the smiles were forced, but Jack was willing to believe the act for now. They could both use a little cheer after the year they had just lived through.

As he went down the steps to where his team were gathered though, it felt like he'd only been gone a few hours. He clapped his hands together to draw their attention. "Okay guys, time to head home. You know how I feel about unnecessary overtime."

"We just wanted to make sure you were alright," Gwen said. "We were worried when you disappeared, you know. We thought we'd lost you again." Her voice shook and Jack remembered how they'd all been when he last came back from the dead.

He stepped forward and drew Gwen into a hug. "I'll never disappear without warning again unless I can help it. I meant to leave a note last time, but it was all a bit of a rush." The lie tasted nasty on his tongue. The second the Doctor-Detector had started to register the Time Lord's presence, Jack's thoughts had left Torchwood so fast that he'd been to the End of the Universe and back before he'd even started to miss the people who had been the biggest part of his life. The Doctor had that effect on him. He'd tried to fight it, back in the dark days when he'd hated the Time Lord so much for his negligence, but he'd never managed to stop loving him. It was easier to give in to his feelings. They normally steered him well.

Gwen and Owen departed, Toshiko running after them like a loose third wheel. Ianto hung around awkwardly. "Something the matter, Ianto?"

"I was just wondering if your guest had accommodation or if you required me to book something, sir." Even now, after all their intimacy, Ianto called him sir. Possibly he knew how much of a turn-on it was.

"I'm gonna put him up here for a while until he adjusts to Cardiff better. His previous address is classified, but I can tell you it was a far cry from this city. He's a bit overwhelmed."

Ianto was frowning slightly now. "I wasn't aware we had a guest room."

"We don't. He can take my bed, I'll have the sofa."

Ianto's adorable frown became more pronounced when he heard this, but he quickly covered it up with a calm expression. It was worrying how easily he could do that. "If you like you could stay with me."

Here it was, then. The first choice. Steamy 'I missed you' sex with Ianto, or watching the Doctor sleep. He'd never seen the Doctor sleep, but he'd had sex with Ianto loads of times. Also, the Doctor could leave any day, whereas Ianto would still be around and hopefully willing in months yet to come.

"I'd rather not leave him alone here. Maybe once he's familiar with the place."

Ianto didn't comment, just nodded and wished him good night as though they were nothing more than colleagues.

Jack went back to settle the Doctor in, wondering when he'd start regretting his choice.


	2. The Cult of Weevil

Stuck on the Slow Path

Stuck on the Slow Path 2 – The Cult of Weevil

They didn't get much sleep on the first night. They stayed up late talking like teenage girls on their first sleepover. Even though it had technically been a year since Jack had been reunited with the Doctor, they hadn't exactly had much time to catch up on events and they both had many adventures to talk about. It was half-past five when the Doctor's voice, which had grown steadily drowsier over the past hour, finally drifted into the deep, heavy breathing that signified sleep. Jack considered trying to get some sleep too, but he could only manage a light doze with an hour or so spent watching the Doctor relaxed in slumber. He really was very beautiful.

At seven forty-five, Jack's wrist computer started bleeping urgently with a message from Ianto. He sat up with a groan. It felt like he hadn't slept at all, which was almost true. A few metres away, the Doctor stirred. Jack added the way the Time Lord woke to his list of reasons to love him. He stretched like a sleepy cat and didn't seem completely with it first thing. His dreamy smile at Jack confirmed it. He mumbled something that could have been good morning, then turned over and went back to sleep. God, how Jack would love to wake up right beside him where he could pull that lithe figure close. As it was, he couldn't stop himself sitting on the bed and gently stroking the Doctor's mussed-up hair. "Come on, wakey-wakey. Good little Time Lords need to get up and out of bed."

"Mmfaboffaway…" Jack couldn't quite make that one out, but he was pretty sure it didn't mean 'of course, I will be out of bed momentarily'.

He shook a shoulder gently, his fingers running over the silky skin a little more than they needed to. "Come on Doctor, the alarm doesn't sound for nothing. Something must be happening. Your first day on the Torchwood team awaits."

The Doctor pouted at him.

"I'll just use the shower," Jack said hastily, "then you can." He went into his small bathroom and switched the water temperature to cold. Sleepy Doctor in his bed, he could stand that. Sleepy Doctor in his bed pouting, that was too much. Way too much for this stupid ape to handle.

Once he was shivering he turned the water off, making sure to put the temperature back to a normal level for the Doctor. He paused at the bathroom door with a towel wrapped round his waist as the realisation set in. The Doctor was going to use his shower. It stood to reason he would do it naked.

He shook himself, water flying from his hair. He really had to stop acting like a horny teenager. The Doctor had enough on his plate without Jack getting all starry-eyed.

"Shower's free," he called as he re-entered the bedroom, only to find the Doctor had soundly gone back to sleep.

Tea splashed onto the table as the Doctor tried to yawn and drink at the same time. Ianto mopped it up with a tissue from his pocket, always prepared for spillage. The whole team were assembled around the briefing table, most of them half-asleep. The only operatives fully alert and ready for the working day were Jack and Ianto. As a side-effect of his military training, Jack was able to go from fast asleep to wide awake in fifteen seconds or less. Ianto was an early bird by nature, which had indirectly led to this meeting.

"So tell us again, Ianto. The broadcast started when?"

"It was first on Sky News at half-past five this morning." On the wall behind them their television was showing the news, which was currently focusing on the grisly slaughter of at least one-hundred-and-fifty young people at a local nightclub.

"So why didn't you bring it to our attention until seven forty-five?" Jack glared at his employee. In this line of work, minutes could make a difference between life and death. Ianto should know that.

"I thought I would try to find out what I could before calling everyone together," the Welshman replied. "I watched the broadcast, then I did some research, then I went down and had a look around…"

"Alone?" Jack couldn't remember training them to be this reckless. Were they just picking it up from watching him?

"The scene was and still is crawling with policemen. Security's never tighter than after a crime. I doubt I was in much danger."

"Right. Because police officers are well-equipped to handle the sort of stuff Torchwood meets on a daily basis."

"You recruited me," Gwen said. "I was a police officer."

"Beyond the point, Gwen. The fact is Ianto, you should have called us immediately and you definitely shouldn't have gone down there alone. You know better than that! What were you thinking?"

Ianto shrugged. "I suppose I was thinking about everyone's reactions if I woke them up at half-five in the morning to watch the news without having anymore information."

Jack had to concede the point there. He might be a morning person, but judging from the bleary-eyes and yawns around him, he was the only one. If he had to be truthful with himself though, his anger stemmed from the fear that Ianto could have been hurt. "Still, you shouldn't go off alone. Sometimes I…"

"If I could just interrupt Jack, sorry." The Doctor's voice was like a sharp blade across Jack's sentence. "Did you find anything of interest?"

Ianto nodded and opened a file he had on the desk. Toshiko glanced up to see if Jack cared about being cut off, but the Immortal kept his face steadfastly blank. As long as the Doctor was his 'superior', Jack had to step down in situations like this. He didn't mind. He'd served worse officers in times long gone.

Ianto passed around photographs of the crime scene and results of the tests he'd performed. State-of-the-art Torchwood equipment meant no waiting for labs to process things. Well, when the state-of-the-art equipment worked as it was supposed to. "There wasn't much blood, but I analysed what was there. It wasn't all human. Some was Weevil."

"Well this is all a bit of a waste of time then, isn't it?" Owen said, dropping the papers he'd been reading onto the table. "Some Weevils felt like painting the town red." The Doctor's glare killed Owen's grin and the man tried to retract his words. "Sorry, bad taste."

"If only it was that simple," Jack muttered, ignoring Owen's bad pun and looking over Ianto's findings himself. The crime scene photos were disturbing, but not due to the bloody mess one would expect to see. The bodies were clean with no gaping wounds or massive lacerations. "What killed these people? How did they die?"

"Puncture wounds on the throat," the Doctor said grimly, handing the close-up picture to Jack for him to scrutinise. "There should be a lot more blood."

"So this wasn't just a random slaughter," the Captain realised. "This was a blood haul. Teenagers packed into a nightclub like lambs in a slaughterhouse and someone or something decided to capitalise on it." He clapped his hands together. "Right Ianto, this is your case so far, any leads?"

"Well, although the club was at maximum capacity…"

"It's the place to be at the moment," Tosh said, as though she herself went there every night. When everyone looked at her quizzically, she blushed. "At least, that's what I've heard."

"As I was saying," Ianto continued, "there had to be about two-hundred people in that night, but there were only one-hundred-sixty-two bodies. Even accounting for poor numerical skills in the doorman, we're missing a fair few people. So…" he lifted his open laptop over to the table and turned it to face the rest of the team. "I took a look at the security tapes. The recordings of inside the club are all missing, but just outside on the street is monitored separately, near the door. We don't know what they did inside, but this shows a group of people leaving just after the murders took place at two this morning." The image wasn't very clear, but a gang of youths could be seen piling out of the club in an exuberant manner. If you looked closely, some of them appeared to have bloodstains on their clothes.

"Wait, two o'clock this morning? When did the police get down there?" Jack was puzzled now. The news wasn't normally so slack in reporting a major catastrophe like this, even in sensitive cases.

"The incident wasn't reported to the police until four, when the cleaners went in. The club shuts at three, the cleaners turn up at four. This time they had a bit of a shock."

"What about the bouncers?" Gwen asked. "Where were they when this was happening?"

"Inside, having a break," Ianto said. "Unfortunately for them."

"So they're dead too," Jack said with a sigh. "Okay. Toshiko, you need to find me a match on any of these people leaving the scene. Ianto, keep going over your files, check we haven't missed anything. Those kids looked like your average partygoers to me, but clearly something's amiss. Gwen, you're helping Tosh and Ianto. Owen, Doctor, you're with me."

"And where are we going?" Owen asked, unenthused.

"We're going clubbing." Jack nudged the Doctor with a grin. "I do owe you a drink."

"I'd forgotten how in-control you can be." The Doctor smiled as he climbed out of the black, shiny Torchwood vehicle. "It's nice to see you in your element."

Jack closed the door after him in a gentlemanly fashion. "Well I do enjoy my work. Most of the time. Beats selling windows."

Owen huffed as he walked past them up to the doors of the nightclub. "Yeah, but you're not as likely to get covered in blood."

"Depends how clumsy you are," Jack said with a grin. He took a deep breath and opened the door. The room had what could only be referred to as a dead smell. Jack sometimes wondered what it would be like to be one of those people who wouldn't recognise the smell of a room filled with corpses, who just said 'ew, what's that?' instead of 'oh god, not again'.

The Doctor's face was grave as he examined the room. Many of the bodies had been removed, since the investigation was now a few hours old. Ianto had been right to visit when the scene was fresh, but that didn't mean he should have gone alone. Owen had start to prod one of the bodies with a shiny scalpel, the way medics are prone to do. Jack started looking around for any signs of damage. Certain chairs and bottles had been smashed, but only on one side of the room, near the door. "They didn't realise until they were cornered," he murmured to himself.

"What?"

He walked over to Owen, who was kneeling in a patch of sticky something. Looked like drink though, rather than blood. "The things over here were broken to fend off attackers. Right near the door, so it must have been locked. They were trapped, they couldn't get out, so they tried to fight. But on that side," he pointed over to the other end of the room where the Doctor had wandered, "no signs of a struggle."

Owen nodded and put the limbs of the corpse he was examining into their original position. "I think you're right. The bodies get newer over here. And a bit messier. Some of 'em have other injuries, broken bones and stuff. Nothing deadly, but the sort of thing you'd get in a fight. Over there the bodies only have the neck wound they needed to bleed them dry. They must have blended in, done it subtly."

"And it was only when the crowd was thinned to a few survivors on this side that the victims could see their attackers," Jack said, contemplating this.

"One question."

"Go on."

"Does your friend normally gravitate to the girls' bathroom the second you enter a nightclub?"

Jack looked over to see the door to the girls' toilets swing shut. "Not normally, no. I'll just go…" he gestured in the Doctor's direction then followed the Time Lord. Maybe this much death in one setting had been too much for him on the first day. Sure, he'd seen a lot of pointless death and suffering in his nine-hundred years, but that didn't seem to make him feel it any less.

Jack pushed open the door carefully, fully prepared to fulfil his duties as friend and comforter. "Doctor? Everything okay?"

A blue light was reflected from the porcelain of the sink as the Doctor shone his sonic screwdriver around. "Somebody was sick in here."

"Nice." Jack remembered that the Doctor wasn't exactly a party animal. "You know that isn't entirely an infrequent occurrence in a nightclub. Crazy kids of today and all that."

The Doctor nodded and shut off the screwdriver. "Righto. So vomiting Weevil blood is a regular thing on the Cardiff club scene."

"What?!" Jack rushed to the sink, but there was no vomit to be seen.

"I assume it was rinsed out at some point," the Doctor said. "Luckily, I have my own DIY forensics kit right here." He turned the screwdriver on again, shining it at the sink. Dark smears were revealed on the porcelain. "And the scanner says…" he twisted his wrist so the small screen was visible to Jack, who read the results.

"Stomach acid, vodka, cola, Ecstasy, Cocaine and weevil blood."

"With a dash of homemade Shepherd's pie," the Doctor said, finishing the analysis and switching off the sonic screwdriver.

Jack admired the shiny object as the Doctor put it back in his pocket. "I've really gotta get one of those."

"Spare one in the Tardis," Doctor said nonchalantly. "Course, that's laser, not sonic."

Jack hesitated. Was he being offered the Master's screwdriver? He tried to assess the Doctor's expression, but the Time Lord was avoiding his gaze. "Isn't that set to isomorphic controls?" He ventured.

"Oh yes, so it is," the Doctor said with visible relief. "Guess it's no use to you then." He seemed particularly happy about it, leaving Jack feeling confused. Why offer something you didn't want to give away? Then he remembered all the times he'd sort of wanted something, but sort of wanted someone else to take it away, and it didn't seem like such a mystery anymore. Maybe the Doctor was closer to human than he let on.

They left the bathroom together and went to help Owen prepare some of the bodies for transport. The medic looked up at them with a distasteful expression. "You know, I'm pretty sure I'm duty-bound to tell Ianto if you two disappear off into the bathroom together for any length of time."

Jack just laughed. Partly at the insinuation, partly at the shocked look on the Doctor's face when he realised what Owen was thinking.

"…We were going to head off to talk to her, then I remembered that lecture you gave me this morning about not running off. So I thought we'd wait around here and do nothing." Jack smiled at Ianto's passive-aggression. Rebelling by doing as he's told. Typical.

Toshiko had found a match for a few of the survivors – Zackary West, Hayleigh Green and Tracy Leighton. Gwen had gone over their background records and investigated as much as she could without leaving the base (Ianto insisted she stay until Jack's return). There seemed to be nothing particularly out of the ordinary with any of them. They were trouble, insofar as their school records and insignificant police reports showed, but none of their behaviour went beyond verbal abuse and petty theft and in Tracy's case, a few instances of lower class drug use.

"Alright, we'll split up to get it done faster. Toshiko, you carry on trying to ID the others. Owen, you've got bodies to cut. So that leaves us four for three suspects."

"But two of them live together," Gwen said helpfully. "Zack and Hayleigh are students, they share a flat."

"That simplifies things. Okay, you two call on Tracy Leighton, me and the Doctor can talk to Zack and Hayleigh."

"Actually, Jack," Gwen spoke up again, looking nervous. "I need to talk to you about something on the way."

Jack sighed, a bit heavier than necessary. "Fine. Me and Gwen will see Zack and Hayleigh." He turned to address the Doctor. "You mind going with Ianto to speak to Tracy Leighton?"

The Doctor shook his head and smiled amiably. "Not at all."

Jack fought the urge to sulk as he and Gwen set off, leaving the Doctor and Ianto behind as the Welshman put on his coat. As they reached the car, Jack sighed again. "So what was it you wanted to talk about?" he asked, unlocking the car so he and Gwen could climb in.

"Well… it's sort of… I… I want some time off," she said, brightening as she found the right words.

Jack started the engine, then sat back and examined his passenger. "If you're going to lie to me have the decency to be convincing."

Gwen wilted under his hard stare. "I'm sorry, Jack. Ianto just said that…"

"He didn't want me partnering with the Doctor? That's petty, even for him." He'd been so happy about bringing the Doctor to his world that he hadn't really considered the consequences.

Gwen hurried to correct him, eager to perform her role as team peace-keeper. "No, that's not it. He wants to talk to him a bit, find out his intentions, that sort of thing."

Jack growled under his breath and accelerated sharply, making Gwen fumble for her seatbelt. "He's just going to confuse him. The Doctor doesn't have any intentions. He's my friend and he's stuck here, so I'm trying to make him feel at home."

"So then Ianto has nothing to worry about," Gwen said with a smile that was altogether too cheery.

"I never said that," Jack said, taking a corner sharply. "Maybe I've got intentions of my own."

"What are you playing at, Jack?" He wasn't sure if she meant his driving or his relationships. "Ianto loves you." That cleared that up.

"He doesn't love me. There's no love in what we do. Believe it or not, it is possible to care about someone, to be possessive of them and have sex with them without actually loving them. You should know that." She glared at him, offended by the allusion to her involvement with Owen, so he continued before she could get on her high horse. "I care about Ianto. I care a lot. But it's no fairytale romance."

"And the Doctor? What about him?"

"That's easy. I love him."

Gwen sighed. "Well I hope you know what you're doing, because nobody else does."

"I like it better that way," Jack grinned. The truth was he knew exactly what he was doing. He was setting himself up for heartbreak, yet again. He'd give the Doctor his all (was that possible if the Doctor was his all?) then the Time Lord would run off again when his TARDIS was fixed, picking up pretty humans from around the galaxy and showing them the stars. And he'd find the right kind of humans too, ones who weren't irreparably warped by the Vortex. And he'd love them because they weren't wrong. Then Jack would return to Ianto and they would start to comfort each other again. He had this one all planned out. Now all he had to do was wait and hope his plans went to crap.

"You've known Jack a long time then, sir?"

The Doctor contemplated the question as Ianto slowed to a halt outside the address they had for Miss Tracy Leighton. She was nineteen years old, studying Modern Literature at University. She lived with five other people in a large student house and she was a suspect for the gruesome murders that had taken place last night.

"He's known me longer than I've known him, but I suppose we're old friends now, yes." There. That should be a sufficiently cryptic response.

Ianto's brow furrowed as he switched off the engine. "Is there some sort of time travel involved or do you just mean Jack knew of you before you actually met him?"

"Um…" he'd lost this one. "Time travel." Jack would be annoyed.

Ianto nodded. "I understand. Jack doesn't really lead a chronological life as far as I can tell."

The Doctor tried not to look too surprised and climbed out the car, slamming the door shut behind him. "That's right! Jack the time-traveller. Messing up the timelines for all us normal day-to-day folk who are used to Tuesday following Monday. Bloody nuisances." He wandered up the path to the badly-maintained house.

Ianto smiled at him, a little bemused, then rang the doorbell. A dog started barking a few houses down the street. Inside the house they could hear footsteps getting louder and descending towards them as somebody thundered down a staircase. The door was wrenched open, only to snap closed when it turned out to be latched. The person on the other side swore loudly in a male voice. Presumably it wasn't Tracy.

"Hang on a sec, mate." There was a scratchy sound as the chain was undone, then the door opened to a young man in tracksuit bottoms. Nothing else. He frowned at them when he saw they were strangers. "Yeah?"

"We're here to see a Tracy Leighton, do you know if she's around?" Ianto asked as politely as possible.

The man's expression became guarded, a sure sign he was hiding something. "Don't know, I'll have a look. If she is, who should I tell her it is?"

The Doctor took the psychic paper and held it up to the lad's face. "She'll know what it's about," he said with a confident smile.

Nodding quickly, their host stepped back. "Come on in, this is the living room. I'll just go get her now, sir. Do you want anything while you're waiting?"

"No thank you," the Doctor said, taking a seat on the ragged sofa and kicking aside some fast food packaging so he could put his feet up on the messy table. Ianto watched as the Doctor fidgeted and eventually pulled an empty beer can from under his back, then chose to sit carefully on the arm of the sofa instead.

"What does your identification say?" he asked curiously.

"Let's find out," the Doctor said, taking a closer look at his own ID card, psychically willing the previous image to appear. "It's psychic paper, it shows people what they want to see, or a symbol they'd respect. Hmm, don't recognise that though." It looked like a face with big fangs, drawn in red. And along the top it said… "Cow? It doesn't look like a cow."

Ianto leaned over to get a better look. "C-O-W. It appears to be some sort of acronym. You don't know what it stands for?"

The Doctor went through his mental archives, but drew a blank. Or rather, a lot of unlikely options. "Probably doesn't mean Can Of Worms."

"Or Casualty Of War."

"Or City Of Westminster."

"Or Commanding Officer's Wife."

"Or Crude Oil Washing."

This could have gone all day, but the door opened and a young woman stepped into the room. She matched the visual record they had. This was Tracy Leighton. She smoothed down her knee-length black skirt and smiled at them. "Hi, I heard you were here to see me? Is it about last night?"

Ianto and the Doctor shared a look. The Doctor raised his eyebrows and Ianto took the subtle encouragement. "Yes, we're here to talk to you about that. What happened exactly?"

She eyed both men suspiciously. "You mind if I see your mark first?"

The Doctor showed her the psychic paper and she nodded. "Okay, and your mark?" Clearly the paper alone would not satisfy her.

"It's in an intimate area," Ianto said, thinking quickly as he could.

"Mine too," the Doctor said quickly.

"So?" the girl shrugged and lifted her skirt.

Ianto's eyes widened while the Doctor's gaze shot to the floor. The evil face that had been printed on the psychic paper had also been tattooed on what both men only felt comfortable calling her 'area'. They had only just met her, after all. The Welshman was the first to recover enough to speak. "Well that's… lovely. But we really aren't comfortable dropping our trousers in strange homes."

Tracy frowned at them, looking more suspicious than ever. "But we're of the same tribe, aren't we? Unless you found that ID…" she put her skirt back down and the Doctor looked up from the carpet. Suddenly vicious, she asked, "What are you, undercover cops? Who gave you that card?"

When neither Ianto nor the Doctor could formulate a quick response, Tracy lashed out with superhuman strength, throwing the Doctor to the floor. Ianto grabbed his gun, but she knocked it across the room before he could properly aim. She grabbed a can from the floor and tore it, then lunged at Ianto's neck with the jagged metal edge.

A few seconds later Ianto realised he could stop flinching. The Doctor was holding her back. Struggling, but managing to keep her from tearing out Ianto's throat. "Help me hold her!" the Doctor yelled.

Ianto took her left arm and with the Doctor on her right, they manoeuvred her to the dirty carpet. She was thrashing and snarling and they obviously wouldn't be able to hold her down for long.

"I don't have my tranquillisers," Ianto said anxiously. He hadn't expected to need them for an interview with a nineteen-year-old girl. She really was absurdly strong. She managed to kick him in the back so he had to kneel on her legs, still holding down one arm. "What do we do?"

"Just keep hold of her," the Doctor said seriously. "I have to see something." He pressed his fingers to either side of the girl's head and forced a path for his mind. It was tougher than walking in to a willing recipient, but not impossible. Unethical, maybe.

It was darker in here than it should be. A human normally had a brighter mind than this. The mindscape and the drifting thoughts – they were animalistic. And he could hear growling getting louder and louder. It wasn't that he was getting closer to something, because he'd hesitated on the surface thoughts, the psychic equivalent of treading water. To continue on with that metaphor, the shark had sensed his intrusion and was approaching rapidly. But the Doctor refused to leave this girl's mind without any more information. If he had to be bait for this predator he would be.

Then he saw it in flashes of red.

And realised the only one he'd trapped was himself.


	3. The Cult of Weevil II

Jack forced his temper down and took deep breaths, glaring at Ianto across the desk

Stuck on the Slow Path 3 – The Cult of Weevil

Jack forced his temper down and took deep breaths, glaring at Ianto across the desk. The Welshman had just finished explaining what had happened at Tracy Leighton's house. It wasn't good.

"So, let me get this straight." Jack leaned forward threateningly. "You ran away and left him there with her? After she'd attacked him?"

Ianto groaned. "You aren't listening to me! They both went still, then he went for me! She must have done something to him…"

"And you left him behind anyway to save your own skin."

"Jack, he tried to kill me! I have bruises around my throat! If I hadn't run away I'd probably be dead!"

Jack looked over his employee and part-time fuck buddy. True to his word, Ianto did look like he'd been through a lot. His shirt was ripped and there were ugly purple and blue marks around his lovely throat, shaped like handprints. It was difficult to imagine the Doctor lashing out physically, but he could tell Ianto was being truthful with him.

"Alright. What did the Doctor do before he went nuts? I want every little movement described in detail."

"We were pinning her down, he said 'I have to see something', then he pressed his fingers to her head…"

"Here?" Jack asked, putting his fingers to his temples the way he had seen the Doctor do on occasions requiring psychic intervention.

"Yes. Is that important?"

Jack quickly decided on a way to explain that wouldn't divulge too much information about the Doctor. "You know how I'm trained in basic psychic defence?"

"You're constantly saying we need similar training," Ianto said with a nod. It was true, especially after that incident with Toshiko and the mind-reader pendant.

"Yeah. Well the Doctor has basic psychic offensive training. He can pry into people's minds." At the alarmed looks of his colleagues (apart from Owen, who was downstairs performing a month's worth of autopsies), Jack hurried to reassure them. "There are strict guidelines about its use. He would have only used it on Tracy to try and calm her down. Problem is, it creates a sort of bridge between minds. He can go over, but…"

"Something else could come back," Toshiko finished with insight.

Jack nodded and stood from his desk. "We have to find him before he gets hurt."

"You mean before he hurts someone else," Gwen corrected.

Then Owen burst in. "They weren't all murdered," he said quickly, disregarding whatever they were talking about before he arrived. "One overdosed on a curious mixture of…"

"Don't tell me," Jack interrupted, "Ecstasy, Cocaine and Weevil blood."

"How the hell did you know that?"

"Didn't I tell you? Vomit in the sink at the club contained all three."

Owen glared at him. "I think you neglected to mention it. Anyway, I've started testing the blood. Have we ever looked into Weevil blood? I mean, really studied it?"

Jack shook his head and stepped onto the lift, heading out to begin his search for the Doctor.

"No, but I think it's time we started."

**People everywhere. Human. The meat walks free! And I am free to feast on the flesh and the blood!**

_Except I'm not sure that's a good idea. Something's very wrong here and glutting myself on the innocent masses won't fix it…_

**But would feel good. To crush their bones and make them scream, to eat their life and feel my power!**

_I have power. Other power. This isn't it. This is madness. Something's gone terribly wrong…_

**Fear? Fear is no good. Fear is not strength. Fear will not make me powerful. Must hide until fear is gone.**

_Hiding is a good idea. But where do I hide? I must have hidden somewhere before… Where have I come from? I have to get back there…_

After searching Cardiff for an hour, Jack found the Doctor less than thirty metres away from the Hub. The Tardis had been reasonably close to the entrance to the base and the Doctor knelt outside it, pawing pathetically at the door. He looked distraught and was making howling noises similar to the ones made by the Weevils when the Rift was opening. The few people hanging around on this cold afternoon were paying no attention to the scene and Jack presumed the perception filter on the Tardis was camouflaging them sufficiently.

When Jack approached though, the Doctor's head perked up and the Time Lord growled dangerously. He backed away on all fours, still growling. Jack put his arms up in surrender. "Come on Doctor, you know me."

"WRONG!" The Doctor snarled, hatred and fear in his eyes. "You wrong!"

It was like being knifed in the chest, and Jack had a lot of experience in that. He took another step closer, willing the Doctor to stay put. "Maybe I am wrong, but I'm not going to hurt you. You'd know that if you had any sanity left." He stopped edging towards the Doctor and stood perfectly still, letting the Time Lord see he meant no harm.

The Doctor continued to snarl and cower for a short while, but eventually he saw Jack wasn't attacking, and grew more confident. He pushed himself up to his feet and slowly stepped towards the Captain, pausing at each step in case Jack attacked. The Captain ached to just grab him, but his patience paid off and finally the Doctor stood barely an inch away, sniffing curiously at him. Jack remained as still as he could manage, but couldn't help a twitch when the Doctor leaned forward and ran his tongue up the length of Jack's neck.

"Doctor?" His voice was normally deeper than that.

The Doctor leaned back again and ran his tongue over his lips, as if pondering the taste. Then he beamed. "Jack!" And the Immortal found himself knocked to the floor by an armful of friendly Time Lord.

"He wasn't like that with me," Ianto grumbled as Jack tried to manoeuvre the Doctor to a chair. "I know the difference between killing and cuddling and he was definitely trying to kill me."

Jack tried to think up a possible explanation while prying the Doctor's fingers off of his wrist. "I think it's because I'm familiar. He's been reduced to some kind of primitive state, he probably sees me as a pack mate or something." It was a serious and possibly dangerous situation but Jack couldn't get the smile off of his face. The Doctor had overcome the sense of wrongness when he'd realised it was Jack. That was a good sign, right? He knelt down before the Time Lord. "You want food?"

The Doctor looked around, his predatory gaze settling on Toshiko. "Food."

Jack realised what he was thinking, with horror. "No!"

"No?" That look was not learned from a Weevil. Kicked puppies had learned their look from this.

Jack sighed and stroked the Doctor's wild hair. "I'll get you food."

The Doctor smiled and before Jack could move, he'd been licked again. This time on the lips. He glanced up, but his team were conscientiously looking elsewhere. Gwen returned to the Hub, jogging down the steps.

"You found him then. He didn't do any harm, did he?"

Jack shrugged. "He was out there an hour before I got to him, but he's not covered in blood or anything."

"That's the part I don't understand," Toshiko said from her work desk. "If we assume those kids did something to their brains, some sort of drug that made them behave in an animalistic way, why were the murders at the club so neat and precise? If Ianto's account of Doctor Smith and Tracy's behaviour is correct, the club should have been covered in blood and the victims should have been in pieces. Not that I'd prefer that," she added hurriedly, "I'm just saying."

Jack nodded. "You're right. There's a missing link here." The team groaned. "No pun intended!" he cried defensively.

"I think I can help there," Owen said confidently from the lab doorway. "If you'd all like to walk this way."

The team shared curious glances then followed Owen down to the medical lab, Jack leading the Doctor by the hand.

Although everyone in the room was intelligent (the Doctor being a temporary exception), Owen felt the need to narrate his test results.

"What we have here is the brain chemistry and organ functions of someone who's taken a small dose of Weevil blood intravenously. As you can see, the body gets stronger and faster and more resilient to damage, just like a Weevil. The brain undergoes a slight degradation though. It'd be a bit like a buzz. They'd lose their inhibitions and exhibit violent tendencies. But…" he pre-empted everyone's questions, "not to the point that John is." For a moment, Jack had forgotten that the Doctor's name was officially John. "He's showing mental degradation of a much higher degree, the kind that comes with a really large dose of Weevil blood."

"I went to that girl's house," Gwen spoke up. "The one who OD'd? Her parents told me her behaviour got stranger and stranger. They said near the end she was like an animal."

Toshiko put it all together. "In small doses they would have had violent tendencies and superhuman ability, but not so much that they would lose their capacity for human subtlety. They could have stealthily snuck through the club like predators, picking people off one by one."

"But it's not enough for some of them," Jack said, ignoring the Doctor pawing at his shirt, "some of these kids are taking massive doses and ending up no better than Weevils. Gwen, when we were speaking with Zack and Hayleigh earlier, didn't you say they seemed scared of Tracy? I'm betting she's taking more than she should and it's turning her into something they're afraid of."

"_I'm _afraid of her," Ianto said, remembering her attempt to slit his throat.

"But what about the Doctor?" Owen asked, watching as the man attacked Jack's coat with his teeth. "He didn't take any, did he?"

"The effect of the blood on Tracy's mind must have been overwhelming," Jack said as he gently tugged his coat from the Time Lord's mouth. "It probably just fucked up his mental balance. I expect it'll wear off in time."

Toshiko remembered the file she was holding and waved it up in the air. "I have everyone identified now so we can check on them."

"Good work, Tosh. Since any one of them could be dangerous, we'll go as a team." He looked at the Doctor, contemplating his options.

"We could put him in one of the cells," Ianto suggested, seeing the dilemma.

Jack nodded. "I guess it's the only choice. Back in a sec." He took the Doctor's hand and led him out of the medical room, down into the holding area. He picked the cell nearest the door and took the Doctor inside, sitting him down on the floor. "Stay." He stepped out and closed the door, activating the locking sequence.

The Doctor scrambled over to the clear wall and pressed up against it. "Jack?" It was more of a bark than a human question, but it broke Jack's heart all the same.

He turned away from the cell.

"Jack!"

He turned back.

"You'll thank me for this when you're back to normal, you know." He really hoped that was the truth. The Doctor just gazed mournfully at him. "Oh for the love of… fine."

He pressed in the code and the door opened. Once again he was bowled over by happy Time Lord. But… a bit more happy than last time. Jack swallowed as he felt the erection pressing against his thigh. "Um… Doctor…"

That delicious tongue ran up his neck again, making him shiver. The Doctor was making noises that were a mixture of grunts and moans as he rubbed up against Jack's body. This had to stop. Now.

It was another minute before Jack could find the resolve to push the Doctor away and hold him down. "No."

"No?" Damn it, the kicked puppy look was back, along with harsh panting and some half-hearted attempts to grind against Jack's leg.

"Jack, is everything okay down here?" Ianto's voice drifted down to them, followed shortly after by his presence. He merely raised a disapproving eyebrow at their position tangled together on the floor, but it was enough to make Jack feel ashamed.

He pushed the Doctor away and went over to Ianto. "I think we're gonna have to take him with us. He won't go in the cell."

Ianto didn't look like he believed that at all, but he nodded. "I'll take my car as well then, so there's room for everyone."

A loud growl interrupted them. The Doctor was glaring at Ianto and was crouched in what Jack could only call 'fight or flight position'. He lunged forward and Ianto ran back up the steps to get some space between them. The Doctor stopped between the men on the stairs, kneeling in what could hardly be a comfortable position.

"Mine!"

Jack immediately realised (with some guilty pleasure) that the Doctor was feeling territorial. He knelt down beside the Time Lord and petted his hair softly. "That's right, Doc. Yours. Don't you worry about that. Ianto's going now, aren't you Ianto?"

Ianto glanced between the men and understood that Jack was trying to pacify the regressed man, so he nodded and backed out of the holding area. The Doctor made a pleased noise and nuzzled Jack's hand. All threats to his property were gone for now.

Jack sighed. "I don't know how I'm going to get you to sit still in the car."

Owen climbed back into the Torchwood jeep and Ianto went ahead into the driver's seat of his car. The two of them had just been into the house of one Ben Weaver, an eighteen-year-old lad caught on CCTV leaving the scene of the crime last night.

"That was fast," Jack said with surprise, putting the pine scented air freshener into the glove compartment so the Doctor would stop trying to bite it.

"Yeah. Follow Ianto," Owen said as the car ahead of them pulled away. Jack complied, making the Doctor jump as the car started to move. "Ben wasn't in, but his parents gave us the address of the club he goes to three times a week. They called it the 'Weasel Cult'. Sound familiar?"

"They just gave you the address?" Toshiko asked incredulously.

"They're worried about him," Owen said bluntly. "They know he's into something, figured it's drugs, but from what they were saying I'd guess he was only a few steps behind Tracy in the Weevil race."

They reached the warehouse with little trouble, though Jack did swerve slightly when the Doctor nipped at his ear. The area described by Ben's parents looked sickeningly familiar.

"This is where those bastards took all the Weevils," Owen said, recognising the warehouse from their previous dealings with Weevil hunters. "They're reusing all the old shit and making a slaughterhouse-slash-drug-den!"

"New sin, same venue," Jack said with a shrug, undoing the Doctor's seatbelt. He leaned in to the Doctor's face, looking him straight in the eye. He wasn't entirely sure how much the Doctor could currently comprehend, but he had to try to get through to him. "You be good, okay? Follow Jack." He pointed at himself to emphasise.

The Doctor smiled. "Jack."

"Good, let's go."

The team all pulled out their guns and crept over to the warehouse. The cracked, dirty windows still gave some view to the inside. It looked like some sort of Satanist ritual. The logo of the Cult Of Weevil was on a large banner on the wall. It looked like it had been painted in blood. The same logo could be seen all over the room, tattooed or cut into young skin that was being shamelessly revealed as the cult members rutted with one another, in front of one another.

"They're like animals," Gwen mumbled, horrified by the sight.

Then Tracy appeared. Stark naked, she stood before her 'tribe', her breasts only partially covered by her long, black hair. She was holding a very sharp knife in her left hand.

"Brothers and sisters of the beast! Tonight we celebrate victory! Today I was hunted by hypocritical, elitist, pretentious and fake humans who tried to stop our enlightenment!" The crowd booed, predictably. Ianto looked a little put out by Tracy's description. "But the Beast took hold and corrupted one of them, turned them to the cause!" Everyone cheered. "Tonight we will gorge ourselves on the essence of demonic power!" Another cheer. Tracy certainly knew her cult-rallying.

She gestured to a couple of lads at the side – Tim Parker and Kyle Roberts, if Jack remembered correctly – and they wheeled forward a large cage containing a Weevil. It didn't look happy, but it appeared in no condition to fight its captors.

Beside Jack, the Doctor let out a quiet whine as Tracy lifted her knife. "And now we gather the blood to feed our souls!"

Jack nodded to his team and kicked in the door. "Everybody on the floor! Hands where we can see them!" Half of the room complied, scared kids who couldn't realise what they were getting into until someone pointed a gun at their face. The other teens growled like Weevils in a corner. One lunged at Toshiko, Jack shot him. That would be William Porter, wounded in the shoulder. And like a wounded animal, he howled pathetically. "Even Weevils have the sense to run from guns!" Jack yelled.

Tracy Leighton screamed and lunged for him, knocking him down before he could pull the trigger. Wrestling naked girls was usually more fun, but she was throttling the life out of him.

A blur of brown tackled the girl away with a roar. The Doctor and Tracy tumbled across the floor, the Doctor landing on top. She lashed out with her sharp nails and scratched him across the cheek, but he grabbed her head and slammed down on the concrete.

She went still.

Jack's stomach turned. The Doctor had just killed a nineteen-year-old girl with his bare hands. The guilt would destroy him. He rushed over, pushing the Doctor aside and mustering the energy he needed to revive Tracy.

He spat on the floor when he was done. Her mouth tasted like raw, bloody meat. She didn't sit up, but her eyes blinked slowly, as if she was dazed. The other dosed-up youths started backing away to the far side of the room, realising even in their primitive mindset that the Torchwood group were a danger to them. Jack turned to his team. "Gwen, get the police down here. Make up some drug-gang story."

"What about the Weevils?" Ianto asked, watching as the Doctor walked over to the cage. A closer inspection of the shadows on that side of the room revealed about ten Weevils, cowering in the darkness, weighed down with chains. As if in a trance, the Doctor curled his long fingers around the bars of the Weevil's cage and tugged. The door came flying off the hinges and the metal clanged to the floor.

Jack leapt to his feet and ran over to the Time Lord, grabbing him just as he was releasing another Weevil from its binds. "Doctor, stop!"

Toshiko was the first to notice the phenomena. "They're docile. Look, they're not even running away."

"Jack!" The Doctor was pleading, straining against Jack's hold and growling when the Immortal didn't give any ground. "JACK!"

Much to Jack's irritation, Owen made his actions entirely pointless by starting to free the Weevils himself. When Jack asked what the fuck he thought he was doing, he shrugged. "Can't leave them here. We'll have to take them back to the Hub. Since they're not violent, we might as well let them loose for the minute."

"But they could turn on us at any moment," Jack insisted, wondering if he was the only sane person in the room. Ha, that'd be the day.

"They're following him," Ianto pointed out. Sure enough, the Weevils were all settling down close to the Doctor's heels, turning their alien eyes up to the Time Lord as if waiting for orders.

"Jack," the Doctor said happily, pointing to the Captain as though introducing him to the Weevils.

Gwen re-entered the room, putting her mobile phone back into her trouser pocket. "They're on their way. We'd better move the Weevils out of here."

Owen voiced the drawback to the plan. "We haven't got enough room, even with Ianto doing a Weevil carpool. And we can't leave these kids on their own." Some of them were starting to whine and groan, exhibiting signs of withdrawal. Tracy Leighton and William Porter would need a check-up at the hospital, even though Jack had made sure to aim for Will's shoulder.

Jack reached a decision. "All of you stay here. I'll lead the Weevils out." He turned to the Doctor and put a hand on each shoulder. "Doctor, follow Jack." He gestured towards the docile Weevils. "They follow Jack too." Then he took a few steps back, testing his theory. The Doctor rushed to close the gap between them, and the Weevils followed their new leader.

"Great, a Weevil conga line," Owen muttered sarcastically.

Then, from a distance, the sound of police sirens reached their ears. Jack took the Doctor's hand. "Come on, out the back." He opened the back entrance to the warehouse and led his Weevil tribe out into the night.

The door locked with a bleeping noise. The last of the Weevils was now in Torchwood custody. They had followed Jack and the Doctor harmlessly all the way back to the Hub. It was definitely one of Jack's more surreal nights in Cardiff. A few people had seen them, but presumed it was some sort of fancy-dress bar crawl and made little comment.

Content with a job well done, Jack now turned to his number one concern. The Doctor, who still seemed to be in a primitive mindset despite suffering the effects of a drug he hadn't even consumed for over five hours now. "Safe?" the Doctor barked at him. Huh, a new word. So that was 'wrong', 'Jack' and 'safe' they had in his vocabulary now.

Jack realised the Doctor must have been referring to the Weevils, his caged brothers. "Yeah, they're all safe now with us."

With a look of utter relief, the Doctor collapsed in a faint. Jack almost didn't catch him. When he did, he lifted the Time Lord into his arms and took him upstairs. He wanted to put him to bed where he'd be most comfortable, but damn it he had to have a bedroom that was only accessible by ladder, so he was forced to put the Doctor on the sofa.

It was a few minutes before Jack's voice coaxed the Doctor back to consciousness. He looked around as if wondering where he was, then relaxed when he recognised Jack and the Hub. "That was peculiar."

"I'll say. Do you remember what happened?"

The Doctor frowned. "Vaguely. It's a bit of a blur. Oh god, did I really crack that girl's skull?" That thought woke him up like nothing else.

"It's alright, we saved her. She'll be fine." That was total assumption, since Jack had left before the emergency services arrived. But once he'd breathed life back into her, Tracy seemed the picture of health. William Porter would need a little more attention though.

"I just remember she was going to hurt you and the Weevil sensed my distress and took complete control…"

"Wait, what? What happened to you exactly?" Jack took an antiseptic wipe from a nearby first aid kid (Ianto must have wanted some bandages after Tracy's earlier attack) and began to clean the gash on the Doctor's cheek.

"Well, you know the Weevil have a group consciousness?" Jack hadn't known that, but he nodded as though it was obvious to the most lowly of Torchwood members. "The kids were inadvertently tapping into it when they injected themselves with Weevil blood. The chemicals in the blood were stimulating dormant parts of the human brain and making it possible for the Weevils to pick up on what they were doing. The Weevils could sense their pack mates being drained of their blood. They were terrified, Jack. They wanted to do something but there was something about the human brain that wouldn't let them take complete control. They could only express the anger and the violence through the kids when they took a large dose of Weevil blood. The Time Lord brain was slightly better suited to their purposes though. More psychic ability. I tried to fight the control, but all I could manage was a sort of compromise where the Weevil would take care of my, uh, 'pack' until it could deal with Tracy and her band of slaughter-addicts. I knew they meant no harm, so I allowed it access. Now that the Weevils are safe they no longer have the motivation to force my mind a certain way and everything will go back to normal."

Jack finished dabbing the cut on the Doctor's cheek and put the wipe in the bin. "What about the docile Weevils? They're like cattle."

"They'll be back to normal soon enough, I'm afraid."

"Can't you make them behave?" Jack said, remembering the times the creatures had gone wild in the cells, making a racket and driving everyone nuts.

"It's like I told you. The psychic link is gone. I did them a favour, now it's all done with." He yawned widely. "And not a second too soon, either."

Jack knew he ought to let the Doctor go to bed, but he had to ask and be certain. "Doc?" The Time Lord glanced up quizzically. "Do you remember when I tried to put you in the cell?" Jack left it at that, unwilling to give any more details of the almost-sexual encounter if the Doctor didn't remember.

The Doctor stared at him blankly. "No, why? Did I hurt you? If so, I'm really sorry but I was mostly Weevil for a large portion of the day. All of my complex thoughts were being broken down into primitive commands and there might have been a few mistakes."

Jack smiled to hide the frustration. "No, you didn't hurt me." He stood up and lent a hand to raise the Doctor from the sofa. "You look like you need to sleep. Take the bed again and I'll see you in the morning."

The Doctor frowned. "You're not coming down with me?"

"You kidding? With all the paperwork today's caused, I'll be lucky to sleep in the next week. Besides, I think I'm gonna spend the night at Ianto's. It's been one of those days."

An understanding nod was the only reaction he got out of the Doctor. "I see. Tension relief and all that. I don't know, you humans… Goodnight then, Jack."

"Night."

Jack watched him go and hated himself for wishing the Doctor had remained primal just a few hours more.

Jack sat at the end of Ianto's bed, naked and unashamed. Nudity was pretty much a moot point after what they'd just done. It had been almost exactly like the last twenty times they'd done it, with one minor difference that led to Jack sitting a metre away from Ianto instead of holding him after their intimacy.

He was sitting there for a full five minutes before an exasperated sigh reached his ears. "Are you staying or going, Jack?"

"Which would you prefer?" He had cried out the Doctor's name at climax, after all. People tended to get stroppy about that sort of thing.

"I'd like you to stay." Ianto's accent was thick with fatigue, his words less clipped than usual.

"But…"

"Just because your mind's wandering, doesn't mean your body has to go too."

Jack was too tired to laugh even a little, so he just climbed under the blankets. When Ianto pressed up against him, the Captain dutifully wrapped his arms around the man. "I'm sorry." He really had no reason to apologise, he wasn't doing anything wrong. "I can't help thinking about him."

"I don't care," Ianto replied with forced apathy.

Jack felt a perverse desire to prod the subject. "Not even a little? You're not a tiny bit jealous?"

"Perhaps in a superficial way I'm bothered that you find his skinny arse more attractive, but we aren't exactly emotionally involved… are we?"

"Of course not."

"Right then. Goodnight Jack."

As Ianto shifted away to the other side of the bed, Jack realised the question might not have been rhetorical.


	4. Suicide Street

Stuck on the Slow Path 4 – Suicide Street

The Doctor sighed heavily and dragged a drop of tea around the saucer idly with one long finger. "It's a way to make a living, which apparently I need to do now."

Martha was quiet, letting him speak. The Doctor had arrived at her door at six in the morning, much to the silent irritation of her family. She had phoned into her work placement and told them she might be late, though it shouldn't really take more than a couple of hours to have this chat. It was the perfect opportunity to tell the Doctor that she wouldn't travel with him again and why this was the best choice. Unfortunately, from the sounds of things, he wasn't about to fly off into space either.

The medical student (soon to be graduate, weird occurrences permitting) played the part of the reliable friend. She made multiple cups of tea and listened as the Doctor spoke about his first mission with Torchwood. It was hard to keep from laughing though when he told her how he'd behaved with Jack. At one point in his story, she spat tea all over herself. "You what?!?"

The Doctor looked embarrassed, but couldn't stop a hint of amusement showing on his handsome face. "I pounced on him. Started…grinding and all that nonsense."

"And what did he do?" asked Martha, trying to picture her frigid Doctor letting his animal instincts out for a play. She just couldn't see it.

"Pushed me off, of course."

"Of course," Martha deadpanned. In their short time together she had seen the way Jack looked at the Doctor and she could imagine how much willpower it must have taken the poor man to push the Time Lord away. "And afterwards, when you got better, what did he say then?"

"Oh, he asked if I remembered it. I said I didn't. Don't want him thinking we're something we're not."

Martha noticed how the Doctor shifted awkwardly when he spoke about it and wondered vaguely if there might be more to this than the Doctor was ready to admit. "But he's got this Ianto guy anyway, hasn't he?"

"Yes, Ianto's a good man. Dependable, down to Earth. Just what Jack needs."

"But is he what Jack wants?" she asked, then wished she hadn't when the Doctor narrowed his eyes at her.

"That's neither here nor there. Jack and I are friends. We've been friends for a long time now and that's not going to change anytime soon. I'm only sticking around until the Tardis is repaired, then me and you are off to wherever we want."

"Actually…" Martha corrected him, throat tightening. "I won't be going with you." She chewed lightly at her bottom lip as the Doctor stared at her with those sad, brown eyes.

"Oh."

"Yeah. Look, I'm really sorry, but it's just…"

A mobile phone ring-tone stopped her from explaining. The Doctor watched her expectantly. "Well? Aren't you going to answer it?"

"It's not mine," she insisted, listening to the persistent beeping.

"Oh. Oh!" The Doctor started rummaging in his coat pockets, eventually pulling out a sleek, black mobile phone. "I forgot he gave me this."

"Buying you expensive presents, is he?" Martha teased, grinning when the Doctor glared at her.

The Doctor looked the phone over for a minute before deciding on the correct button. "Ah ha. Hello?"

Martha watched as his face grew serious. "That's awful, but why has Torchwood been called in?" He drew in a sharp breath. "That many? No clear links?" He nodded distractedly, despite not being visible to Jack over the phone. "No, I'm at Martha's." A pause. "Borrowed your Vortex Manipulator. I wouldn't dream of using the blasted thing to go off planet or out of this year, but I figured if it packed in here I could always take the train back. Ooh, you know I haven't been on the train in a long…" he stopped abruptly as if interrupted. "I am not rambling!" Another pause. "Oh alright, I'll be back in a minute." He held the phone away from his face for a moment, concentrating on the screen before choosing another button to press. "There. I do like these little things."

"Back to work then?" Martha asked as the Doctor finished his tea and stood up from the table.

"Yep. Bunch of nasty suicides. Bit suspicious." He paused with his fingers at the buttons on the Vortex Manipulator he wore around his wrist. "Suppose I'll see you again sometime soon. Before I leave, at any rate."

Knowing how quickly the Doctor's life tended to change for the worse, Martha wanted to give him a more meaningful goodbye. But before she could speak, he'd disappeared in a flash of light, leaving her with unspoken emotion and a tea-stained mug.

*

The Doctor had scrunched his eyes closed to avoid the blinding light of vortex-manipulation travel. Upon opening them again though, he still saw sparks and flashes as his eyes readjusted to the dim lighting of the Hub. Strong hands gripped his hips to stop him from falling. Subtle Jack, really.

The Doctor straightened up and the hands slowly relinquished their hold on him. He glanced around the shocked faces of the Torchwood staff. "Sorry, am I late?"

Jack laughed from somewhere behind him. Ianto was the first to recover his composure and offer the Doctor a cup of tea, which the Doctor politely declined. He'd had plenty to drink at Martha's house. He took a seat next to Toshiko and smiled at her. She was still staring.

"I wish you'd tell me when you're going to run off somewhere," Jack said from his place standing at the head of the table. "I had to double-check the Tardis was still outside to be sure you were coming back." For a moment the Doctor was worried about the mention of the Tardis in front of the Torchwood team, but from their gawping faces he concluded that it was all gobbledy-gook to them.

"Don't worry. I won't leave again without letting you know first." The relief on Jack's face stung the Doctor a little. The Captain really believed that the Doctor would just run, after all his hospitality. Of course, he had no real reason to believe any different.

Owen snapped. "Isn't anyone going to mention the fact that John just materialised in the room?!? Is that normal, everyday stuff now?"

"It's my Vortex Manipulator," Jack explained. "It's a piece of technology from the future that allows you to teleport across time and space. It was broken," he said, pre-empting their next question of why he'd never used such a valuable item in their investigations. "The Doc – John… fixed it. And borrowed it. Without my knowledge."

The Doctor smiled disarmingly up at Jack's stern look until the Captain's gaze softened and turned back to the case files. Oh, he knew he shouldn't use Jack's feelings to get away with minor transgressions, but it made life much easier. Momentarily. "So what's going on?"

Gwen handed him a file containing various reports and gruesome photographs of the scene. Then she went over to the board, where some copies of the photos had been stuck up along with post-it notes and papers covered in useful information. Jack took a step back and let her present the case.

"This area's been known as a depressing place to live for a while. Some of the lovely kids call it 'Suicide Street'."

"Let me guess," Owen called out, "there's been a homicide."

Gwen glared at him for his interruption, but her heart clearly wasn't in it. "For a while it was assumed there was some correlation between house prices and living standards. You know, only poor people move in and their standard of living is low so…"

"You're saying that isn't the case?" Toshiko asked curiously.

"It shouldn't be," Gwen said with a shrug. "Perfectly respectable properties. After the first suicide prices slipped a little, but after checking out some of the estate agents' websites, I can safely say they're all reasonably up-market. The families who move in must be moderately wealthy."

"So the deaths aren't financial in cause," Jack ascertained from her speech. "What about the victims? Any typical non-alien circumstances that could explain all this?"

"That's just it," the policewoman said with a flourish. "No explanations at all. Some of the victims were reported to be a little miserable the day they died, but not borderline suicidal. In fact, a lot of the suicides were reported to be happy and vibrant people with a zest for life."

"It has been known for papers to exaggerate personal qualities in the pursuit of a tragic tale," Ianto pointed out cynically.

Gwen spared Ianto an irritated glance then ignored him. "Alright, so you're saying Pepe of number 12 was actually a bubbling cauldron of masochistic depression and not bouncy, friendly or lovable as said in accounts from those who knew him?"

Ianto sighed. "It's possible that he was hiding his problems while around other people so as not to concern them with his grief."

Gwen paused as if to think this over, then nodded. "It's possible, I suppose, though that's a tremendous amount of self-awareness for a dog."

"I'm sorry, hang on," the Doctor put his hand up as if in school. "Are you saying even the dog committed suicide?"

Gwen leaned over the table to the file the Doctor was looking at. The fact that her low neckline was ill-equipped to cover her cleavage went unnoticed by everyone except Jack and Owen, who smirked at one another. She flipped a few pages of reports and pointed to the pictures that illustrated her point. The Doctor tutted and shook his head. "That really is astoundingly sad. He gnawed open the box…"

Despite being within reach of a bowl full of dog food, the animal had chosen to eat half a container of rat poison instead. It had taken some work to get into it with his doggy teeth, but perseverance had won his dubious prize.

Jack took the photo with morbid fascination. "So we're dealing with a phenomena so terrifying or depressing that it drives even animals to suicide?"

"Any died of fright?" Owen asked. "Heart attacks or unexplained sudden deaths in young people?"

Gwen shook her head. "Tosh has already put together a database of all the names, addresses, and autopsy summaries. None scared to death."

"It's depression then," Jack said, still looking at the picture of the poisoned dog. "Something or someone is making people and animals so horrifically miserable that they're killing themselves. If the reports of friends and family are to be believed, then these people went home happy and killed themselves with grief a few hours later." He looked quizzically up at the Doctor, awaiting the usual encyclopaedia's worth of information.

The Time Lord sighed when he realised he was expected to have all the answers. It was good for his ego to be sure, but very demanding. "I couldn't possibly narrow it down yet. Psychic influence, chemicals, abduction and torture…" he trailed off, trying to muster a smile. "Human minds are awfully fragile." He glanced around at the Torchwood team, suddenly aware he'd said too much. "Those bloody aliens think they're god's gift, breaking our poor monkey brains at any given opportunity."

Jack choked on his coffee and nearly suffered his most pathetic death yet.

*

The Torchwood-mobile sped through Cardiff containing the Doctor, Gwen, Ianto and Jack. Toshiko had stayed behind to examine the records more closely while Owen worked on the bodies of the suicide victims.

"So we're headed to number forty-four first?" Jack asked Gwen, who was the main handler on this case. She'd been keeping an eye on the string of deaths for a while, but it was only after the most recent tragedy that Torchwood had the time to really work on it.

"Number forty-four housed a family of six until yesterday evening."

"How many now?" Jack asked her.

"None." Gwen's voice shook a little, but she continued. "They all killed themselves using different methods at around about the same time in different rooms of the house. Their neighbour, Mr Brown, discovered it when he popped by for a coffee before work."

"Okay, Doctor, can you go with Gwen and talk to Mr Brown while Ianto and I check out the death house?"

"I'd rather see the death house," the Doctor said, a little put-out that he'd been offered the 'safe' duty. He was nine-hundred-years old, after all. A little old for coddling. "Why can't Ianto go with Gwen?"

Jack nodded as the car approached 'Suicide Street' (otherwise known as Victoria Road). "Okay, Ianto you're with Gwen." No response. The Doctor looked to the backseat and was startled by the venomous glare directed to the back of Jack's seat. It was gone by the time Jack glanced up at the rear-view mirror. "Ianto? Is that okay with you?"

"Of course," the Welshman replied with little feeling.

The windows were open, giving them a breeze of air through the car. The Doctor dragged in a lungful…and coughed. "Jack, stop a sec."

The car slammed to a halt. Ignoring Gwen's complaints about the sudden stop, the Doctor wound his window down further and leant his head out. Again he took a deep breath, as much as he could contain. He kept it in his lungs until he was sure of his suspicions, then he exhaled with relief. Whatever it was, he didn't want it in his lungs for long. "There's something in the air," he said to Jack's concerned face.

"What kind of something?"

"That I'm not so sure about. But I have this sneaky suspicion it'll get stronger as we get closer to the house. Maybe I should go alone." Time Lords were made of slightly stronger stuff than humans. While he was hardly invincible to toxins, the Doctor did possess a greater immunity to most poisons and mind-altering chemicals.

"We have our masks," Ianto said, referring to the lightweight gas masks kept in the boot for emergencies. "Only two though."

"I'll go without," Jack offered, ever the human shield. "Besides, whatever it is can't be that strong or everyone around here would be killing themselves."

"They don't look like they're far from it," observed Gwen as the team drove past a gang of moping teenagers, a crying baby and a tired mother.

In less than a minute Jack had parked outside house number forty-four, where the suicides had taken place. The team climbed out the car and stretched, their bodies partially numbed from the car journey. Jack checked his gun and walked up the path of the house. The Doctor started to follow, only to halt when the Captain turned around suddenly with a serious expression. "Let me go in first."

"Jack…"

"No, it's not a death-wish, but if the worst does happen, I don't want you getting hurt. Just let me give the place a once-over, then you can come in when it's safe."

"It's amazing I reached my age without you," muttered the Doctor sarcastically. But he let the Captain go ahead, because it did make an annoying amount of sense.

The Time Lord stood with Gwen and Ianto, who seemed hesitant to leave as their leader walked headlong into potential danger. The Doctor wondered just how much of their loyalty Jack had earned and how much was blind faith.

"I bet he would have let me go right on in there," Ianto said miserably, watching as the front door closed behind Jack's well-shaped arse.

"Sorry," the Doctor said feebly, though what he was apologising for he wasn't quite sure. It was hardly his fault if Jack had feelings for him. He just seemed to inspire that in humans. And he did try to rebuff the man at every turn. He'd left the man for dead on a satellite years in the future, for Rassilon's sake, what more did it take?

A look at Ianto's dejected face made him feel like he should be saying more. "Um…look, you're a perfectly fine man and if Jack doesn't…"

A gunshot from the house stopped him mid-sentence. He started to run up the path, yelling back to Ianto and Gwen to stay away. Jack would kill himself if anything happened to them.

*

Jack backed into the corner, gun still pointed at the giant, oozing creature. It was absolutely revolting. It seemed to be dripping some sort of poisonous acid and those damn tentacles had proved capable of smashing through a wall. It swung at him, but he rolled to the side and avoided the attack, losing his gun in the process.

The door slammed open. "Jack!"

Jack glanced up towards the Doctor with a mixture of relief and worry, which turned immediately to horror as the creature turned and stabbed a tentacle straight through the Time Lord's chest. Time seemed to slow as the Doctor's brown eyes stared, shocked, into Jack's. Then he fell to the ground.

Jack screamed and lunged at the creature, but after it had drawn back its limb with a sickening noise it just evaporated into the air, leaving a faint green mist. Jack stumbled over to kneel beside the wounded Doctor and knew immediately that the Time Lord was dying. "Jack…"

Jack applied pressure to the fatal injury, ignoring the burning on his hands from the acidic residue. "Ssh, ssh, save your breath Doc. You'll be okay. I told you to stay away!"

The Doctor was gasping hopelessly for air now, shaking and grasping blindly at Jack's hand. "Jack, I… love…" another gasp and he was gone.

Jack sniffed and wiped away a tear. The Doctor would be alright in a minute. He'd regenerate in a big flash of golden light and be a whole new (but hopefully similar) man. It would take some getting used to, but Jack had done it once before.

Except… it didn't seem to be happening.

Jack waited and waited. The Doctor had shown him the Tardis footage from immediately after the Gamestation, to clear up a few things. It had answered some questions while raising new ones. But it had allowed him to witness the Time Lord regeneration process and he could see it wasn't happening here. Jack gently took the sonic screwdriver from the Doctor's coat pocket and ran it over the acidic substance from the creature. The small screen did not give an analysis, merely flashed up a warning: **Caution! This substance will permanently kill a Time Lord! Keep safe distance!**

The sonic screwdriver clattered to the floor as Jack lost control over his limbs. For a few moments everything went numb. He collapsed down even lower on the floor, leaning over the Doctor's body. It was only when a tear splashed on the Doctor's beautiful face that Jack realised he was sobbing his heart out.

The Doctor was dead.

It was too dreadful to comprehend and Jack didn't want to try. He just wanted to stay here and hold the Doctor. He wanted to be where the Doctor was, in the blissful ignorance of death. He kissed the Doctor chastely on the lips then went to his gun. Death wouldn't be permanent, but he could keep doing it again and again until life somehow became worth living.

He lay beside the Doctor and shot himself dead.

*

When he woke, he was still in the room with the Doctor's corpse. Still beautiful, still warm. Jack snuggled up to the Time Lord's body and cried onto his neck. This wasn't fair, it was so unfair!

_Jack, can you hear me?_

A few minutes without the Doctor and already he was going insane, hearing his voice while cradling his corpse.

Unable to take a second more of this hell, Jack ran to his gun – how did it get over there? – and spent another bullet.

*

When he next woke up he screamed. The Doctor was dead. The Doctor was gone!

"He's dead!" he screamed to the uncaring Universe.

_Who's dead, Jack? Who died?_

"The Doctor," he sobbed in response to the Universe's question. "He died and I couldn't save him…" he broke down again and started looking for his gun. It had been in his hand, he was sure of it.

He saw it now, across the room. But as he went for it, something pulled him back. He turned to see the Doctor's killer dragging his leg back. With an animalistic roar of anguish, Jack lunged at the creature. But it seemed to have more tentacles than before and it managed to pin him to the ground, where he struggled in vain.

_Hold him down, for god's sake get a tranquilliser…_

_Oh Jack, I'm so sorry, I'm right here, please calm down…_

Maybe that last voice really was the Doctor… maybe he was telling Jack to let go, to give in and just let death take him once more to the darkness where they could be together again…

Jack stopped struggling and let the evil creature stab him in the throat. His last thought was that the darkness seemed much softer than usual…

*

The Doctor ran his hands through his hair roughly, making it stick up at all angles. The whole team were in the Torchwood medical facility, looking down at Jack's unconscious form on the bed. They'd had to tranquillise him after he started to fight them.

The Time Lord had ran into the house, only to find Jack dead in the living room from a shot to the head. Since he was holding the gun himself and they were investigating a series of suicides, it didn't take much deduction to work out what had happened. Ianto and Gwen had put on their gas masks and helped him move their Captain's dead body into the back of the car. Thankfully they were too distracted to ask why the Doctor was unaffected by whatever had produced Jack's symptoms.

Thanks to Ianto's speedy driving, the return trip took half the time of the outgoing journey. Unfortunately Jack still woke up halfway through the trip, seemingly in the grips of some sort of hallucination that they couldn't snap him out of. After a fit of sobbing that broke the Doctor's hearts to hear, Jack had pulled Gwen's gun from her holster and shot himself dead again.

They had him in the Hub before he revived again, whereupon he started to scream that someone was dead. The Doctor had tried to get through to him, but all he had managed to ascertain was that he was in the hallucination. It was the idea of his death that was causing Jack this much agony. At least the good Captain had calmed down when told to, though it was doubtful that he'd really known what was happening.

"There must be something we can do," Gwen said, looking sadly over their broken Captain. Even unconscious, there was a frown on Jack's handsome face. He looked pale and absolutely drained. Gwen shuddered when she thought back to their car trip here. The way Jack had screamed, like his world was ending… Then without really seeing them, he snatched her gun and ended his life, right in front of them. Like he couldn't bear another second in this cruel Universe.

She looked over at the reason for Jack's despair. Doctor John Smith (not that she believed for a minute that was his real name) was stroking Jack's hair away from his face with a thoughtful expression. Hopefully he would know what to do. Jack had sort of implied that his Doctor, when he arrived at Torchwood, would have all the answers. Gwen didn't know all the details of the workplace relationships, but she suspected Jack had waited a long time just to be rejected.

"I suppose we follow your orders," Toshiko said from her standing position in the corner. All eyes were now on the Doctor, but the man's focus rested entirely on Jack.

Ianto put a hand on his rival's shoulder, startling the man out of his trance. "He'll be alright, sir. Jack always is."

"Not when I get involved," the Doctor said quietly. Gwen could tell his thoughts were somewhere else, at some other time and place where he'd hurt Jack. Did he make a habit out of it?

She noticed Ianto's hand was still resting on the Doctor's shoulder, offering simple comfort. In fact, the sophisticated Welshman had moved a little closer to Jack's friend, close enough that they had drawn the team's attention away from Jack. Well, this could be interesting…

"Got it!" Owen cried out from the other side of the room like some sort of mad scientist, destroying the atmosphere. He hurried over, pushing between the Doctor and Ianto and injecting something into Jack's arm. Then he nudged the Doctor. "That chemical scan you made me do picked up on something. This ought to neutralise it by making it a target of his immune system."

"Ought to?" Gwen repeated, picking up the slight uncertainty.

"Well yeah, using advanced alien antidotes to treat advanced alien poisons isn't going to be my specialty, is it? You're free to have a go if you fancy your chances better," he added cockily, stepping back as if inviting her to take his place.

"Just finish what you're doing," the Doctor said in a stern voice. Owen grumbled but did as he was told.

Gwen wondered if she was the only person suspicious of the Doctor's true identity. There had been wild speculation amongst the team at first, but they hadn't had much time together to discuss it since. She'd have thought Ianto would know more, but he seemed at ease with letting 'Doctor John Smith' run the show while Jack was incapacitated.

There was a pained moan from the bed. Jack was waking up. He blinked his tear-reddened eyes and looked around the room at them all from Gwen on his right, to the Doctor on his left. He stared in disbelief at the man, his lower lip trembling as though he couldn't think of what to say. He reached up and slowly, as if wanting to put off the moment when his hand passed through the Doctor and proved he was a fantasy, Jack put his fingers to the man's cheek.

With a sad smile, the Doctor put his hand over Jack's, keeping eye contact the whole time. "It was a nightmare, Jack. A hallucination. I'm fine, really. It was all in your head."

Jack tugged the Doctor to the bed and kissed him fervently. The Doctor pulled away. "Jack…"

Jack silenced his friend with another deep kiss that made Gwen subconsciously lick her lips. "My Doctor," he gasped afterwards.

"Yes, yes. But Jack… mmf!" Another kiss that went on for ages, even though Ianto pointedly cleared his throat.

"Jack…"

"Don't you ever do that again!" Jack yelled, throat hoarse from grief and desperation. "Never, ever leave me again!" Then he threw his arms around the Doctor and clutched him like a lifeline. You could just about make out his voice, muffled by the Doctor's shirt, saying "never leave me".

The Doctor sighed.

"I won't Jack. Never again."


	5. Suicide Street II

Stuck on the Slow Path 5 – Suicide Street

In the dim light of Jack's underground bedroom, the Doctor fought for the dignity of both himself and his Captain. He'd stopped bothering to ask Jack if he would let go and instead he had started to try and prise the man off of his body. But the Immortal remained clinging to him on his knees, his face pushed against the Doctor's stomach. Tears had soaked through the Time Lord's shirt and he decided to try another tactic.

"Alright, Jack. I'll stay. Why don't we both lie down together and get some rest, hmm?"

Jack blinked up at him, still looking a little dazed and confused. His eyes went to the bed, then back to the Doctor. He nodded. "I'd like that."

"Okay," the Doctor said softly, "then we have to move over there. Come on now, stand up."

Jack managed to pull himself upright, leaning heavily on the Doctor. When he'd first got up in the medical lab, he'd tried to pretend he was alright after the initial breakdown. Fifteen minutes later, the team had all agreed their leader desperately needed to get some proper rest. Jack had been shaky, irrational to the point of nonsensical, and he'd refused to let go of the Doctor for a second. It was apparent to everyone that some of the side-effects of earlier events were still present in their Captain. Jack had predictably refused to leave them for sleep, which meant their only option was to have the Doctor take him to bed.

As soon as their backs hit the mattress, Jack sprawled over the Doctor like some sort of creeping Ivy. His left arm and leg were effectively pinning the Doctor to the bed and there would be no way to move without waking him when he eventually fell asleep.

The Captain seemed to be trying to inhale the Doctor's neck. "Um…Jack?" The Time Lord asked nervously.

"I missed you," came the choked reply. "I missed everything about you. Your voice, your smile, your smell…"

The Doctor sighed and ran his fingers in delicate patterns over Jack's bare back. They'd removed his shirt because it was splattered with his blood and what might have been brain. The Doctor hadn't looked too closely. The whole revival process was still a bit gross to him, which he supposed was a little hypocritical from someone who regenerated. "You're experiencing anxiety caused by the chemicals from whatever's invading that street. I won't disappear Jack, I promise. The whole thing was just your imagination."

Jack groaned and squeezed the Doctor uncomfortably tight. "I know! I know you didn't die, I know I'm acting like a hormonal teenage girl, but I just can't get my stupid brain to accept you're here!" He started to cry again.

"I could…" the Doctor began, then stopped as the disadvantages of his idea dawned on him.

Jack sniffed and looked curiously up at him. "What?"

"If you think it would help more than harm, I could have a little look inside your head. Maybe close some anxiety doors and unlock some fantasies so you can get some nice sleep. What do you think? I'd rather do that than tranquillise you again."

Jack didn't look entirely averse to the plan. "Any reason you shouldn't?"

"Well, there's the risk I'll see something private."

"I'm not hiding anything from you," Jack said with a tired smile. "Any more problems?"

"I don't want you to be miserable when you wake up from a perfect dream, though even as I'm saying it I realise that you're more likely to feel better for the rest." The Doctor folded his hands under his head. "So it's up to you."

Jack nodded. "Okay, do it." As the Doctor moved his fingers to Jack's head though, the man drew back. "Wait! You'll still stay, won't you?" He shook himself. "No, never mind. You don't have to stay. I'll be asleep anyway, it won't matter…" he looked up at the Doctor with teary blue eyes. "Will you stay?"

"Yes," lied the Doctor. The Torchwood team were without guidance right now and this creature had to be stopped. Jack would need to sit this one out.

Jack's mind was a bit untidy. Could use spring cleaning. One of these days perhaps… Unsurprisingly, the recent hallucination was forefront in the man's mind and it stung the Doctor to see Jack sobbing over his corpse so brokenly. He hurried his visit, locating a happy, if somewhat lewd, fantasy involving Jack, the Doctor, Ianto, and a nude picnic on Morsnok 11.

"There now, ssh…" Gently pushing Jack deeper into the dream, the Doctor lowered his friend to the bed. "There's Ianto, he wants you… oh and look how willing _I _am. Sssh, now…"

Jack's eyes slipped shut as he became absorbed in the fantasy the Doctor had found for him. Even then, he made a sleepy grab for the Doctor's arm as the Time Lord rose from the bed. Those chemicals had really put him into a state, though he would calm down a lot quicker for the Doctor's mental guidance. Since that fiasco with the Cult of Weevil, the Doctor had been both hesitant and eager to use his psychic abilities again. He didn't use them that much and when he did, there was always the risk he wouldn't be careful enough. The Weevil possession had shown his recklessness. His presumption of superiority had led to the animals nearly taking his brain. This was the perfect opportunity to remind himself how to be less superior and more subtle with his power.

After tucking Jack into bed, the Doctor wandered into the main area of the Hub, where the Torchwood team were crowded around Toshiko's computer. Gwen looked up when he arrived.

"How is he?"

"Sleeping, finally," the Doctor answered with a tired smile. "That stuff really knocked him for six. I'd like to be back for when he wakes up, so we'd better get this fixed."

"Well if you've got any ideas, we're open to them," Owen grumbled. "Bloody thing's gone into hiding again."

Toshiko was still tapping keys on the computer. "I think I can track it with the information Doctor Smith gave us about the nature of its secretions."

"It's leaving a trail?" The Doctor asked, concerned. That would let them track the alien, but the chemical trail would affect anybody who came across it in the same way it had affected Jack and various inhabitants of the street. And anyone who underwent the same hallucination-induced suicide was unlikely to survive it as Jack had.

"Yes, but it seems to be keeping to the same street," Toshiko said, focused on the data on her screen. "It moves from house to house, but I don't think it's left the street in a long time."

"Hasn't anyone seen this thing crossing the street from house to house?" Owen asked with confusion. "Don't know about you, but I'd remember spotting an alien when I went out for my morning paper."

"Perhaps it moves below the surface?" Ianto suggested. "The houses in that area all possess cellars and underground rooms. It wouldn't take much effort to break through from one to another."

"Especially if you were a gaseous entity…" the Doctor mused while biting his thumbnail. He looked up at the team when he felt their stares. "Didn't I mention that?"

Gwen raised an eyebrow. "No, you didn't. How do you know that, anyway?"

"Oh, I can't be one-hundred-percent certain, only about ninety-nine. But from the looks of that chemical trail, I'd say its body probably consists of the hallucinatory gases and the secretions are accidental. It probably doesn't even realise the harm it's doing."

"So how do we kill it?" Owen asked. "Bullets aren't going to do much to a big cloud of gas."

"They don't do anything of use to anything," the Doctor snapped. "Ever thought about talking to your aliens? I've glanced over your case records. I'd say about a quarter of the files I examined resulted in you attacking non-hostile and confused life-forms." He was still mentally debating who to blame for that. It didn't seem fair to be angry with Jack at the moment.

Ianto chose to speak up on this one. "With all due respects sir, we lack the resources to accurately translate most alien languages and to hesitate is to risk the human race. We regret such incidents, but…"

The Doctor held up a hand. "You can stop right there and continue when you've thought of some words with genuine feeling. You sound like a Government public apology."

His tan coat billowed as he turned. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to deal with this. Probably not in the Torchwood-approved manner, but hopefully with less blood."

His dynamic exit up the lift was ruined slightly by Gwen joining him, but that wasn't really important. He liked Gwen. From what little he'd seen of her so far and from the things Jack had to say about her, he could tell she was kind-hearted. Her eagerness to see the best in people and her human need for people to get along reminded him slightly of Rose.

"You're joining me then, Miss Cooper?" he asked as they walked to the car.

"Thought you'd need the car keys," she said, dangling them in front of him with a grin.

"You'd be surprised," retorted the Doctor, thinking of his sonic screwdriver. It wasn't car theft if you brought it back, was it? But he let her unlock the car and get in the driving seat while he took the front passenger seat. "Got your gas mask?" he asked, suddenly remembering the dangers ahead for a human adventurer.

"Yeah," she pulled it out of her handbag before starting the car. "I saw what happened to Jack and I really don't want to experience that first-hand."

They drove in silence for a while. Just as the Doctor was considering turning on the radio, Gwen spoke again. "We're worried about him."

"The chemicals should wear off in…"

"Not that," she interrupted as she drove round the round-about. "He's been different since you came here. We don't know who you are and curious as I am, I'm not going to pry, but I would like some assurance that you aren't going to hurt him. He's had enough pain lately."

The Doctor thought back over the year that never was and felt immensely relieved that Gwen didn't know how true her words were or how much Jack had suffered for the Doctor's sake. "I have no intentions of hurting him."

"But…"

"Picture a wall," the Doctor told her. "Now, if Jack decides to bash himself against a wall, is it the wall's fault?"

"It is if the wall puts itself between Jack and his boyfriend," Gwen said with such remarkable quickness that the Doctor couldn't even feel irritated at her observation.

"I don't believe Jack and Ianto are in a relationship by normal standards," he said, feeling slightly uncomfortable with all this human gossip.

"So only normal relationships hurt people?" Gwen asked.

"That's not what I said!" the Doctor cried, mostly annoyed that she had a point. Someone was going to get hurt at this rate, he could see it in the way Ianto looked at him and Jack. "You have to understand. I didn't come here by choice. Jack is the only person I have left. And all these silly little relationship problems are nothing compared to the things I have been dealing with recently!" His voice was getting louder, but he barely noticed. "I'll take the responsibility for a lot of things, but not Jack's feelings! I have done so much to get away from him and he still loves me and I don't understand!" He sagged back in his seat, anger draining away. "I don't understand any of this. Any of you. I thought I did, but it's like… it's like living with Weevils. All those hormones and urges flying around. I deny them. But you humans, you can't do that. You can't accept them either, like the animals do. So you wrap them up in words that lose their meaning because you use them so much and you pretend to feel spiritual connections with one another that are really just bonds of convenience and you try to impose these ideas of what intimacy should be onto anything with a pulse and… it just tires me out."

Gwen pulled up to the kerb outside the scene of the most recent deaths. She seemed to be thinking something over. "What are you? If you say classified, I will shoot you."

The Doctor was too weary from his rant to argue. "I'm the Doctor. A Time Lord. The last of Gallifrey."

"Harold Saxon was a Time Lord, wasn't he?" she asked, remembering the recent political events. "Were you there to stop him or help him?"

"I was aiming for both," the Doctor said quietly, trying not to sound too choked up. "Didn't manage either."

"Well from where I'm sitting it looked like you stopped him," Gwen said.

"No. Humanity stopped him through me. I was weak against him so I borrowed their strength. I chose their side. Your side," he added, remembering he was speaking to a human, not just talking to himself.

"Was it worth it?"

The question took his breath away. It wasn't one he'd expected from an ordinary human, even Jack had avoided the subject. Was it worth it? He could remember the Master's body in his arms so clearly, more vividly than he could recall any other memory since. Jack against his body, fighting as a Weevil, talking with the team… all those recollections were vague and hazy, like he'd barely been there in the first place. But the Master's dying form, his last words, they rang through the fog as though they were only real thing that had happened in the past month.

"I don't know."

"Jack's a real catch," Gwen said helpfully. And bless her, she actually thought she was helping. She just couldn't understand any of this. And the Doctor couldn't remember why he was trying to explain in the first place. Maybe it was just nice to talk to someone outside of the whole situation. He could never talk to Jack about anything with the same ease, because every statement would be loaded with feelings and expectations. Every word would have to be edited to make sure Jack didn't see too much. With Gwen there was no fear of that.

"We should get on," the Doctor said briskly, climbing out of the car and heading up to the house. Gwen put on her gas mask and followed him as he pushed the front door open and carefully entered the house. There was still blood and brain splattered around the room from Jack's earlier successful attempt to end his own life. It was enough to turn the stomach and Gwen was clearly trying not to retch, judging from the way her shoulders were heaving.

She looked up at the ceiling to calm herself. "So you're immune?" Her voice was slightly muffled by the gas mask.

"I suppose you could say that." The Doctor could smell the vile chemical in the air as it drifted into his nostrils. He knew himself enough to know that it was affecting him, but subtly, slowly. He wouldn't suffer the same way as a human would. No hallucinations, no suicide, just whispers behind him and a feeling of utter despondency.

Nothing he wasn't used to.

He knelt down on the wooden floorboards. The smell grew stronger the lower he got. "Let's find the basement," he said to Gwen, letting her try to keep up while he ran around the house. He had to keep moving to distract himself from the voices.

There was no light in the basement, but Gwen had a torch and the Doctor had his sonic, so they managed. The scent was stronger down here, like a mixture of burning and old blood. And the voice was louder. The Doctor really wished he had the luxury of visual hallucinations, because that would be easier than having the Master whispering obscene scenarios in his ear. That cultured voice, twisting everything and everyone to his warped bidding until they were willing puppets.

_It would have been better to give into the madness with me, Doctor. At least then you wouldn't have to be insane on your own._

"Are you okay?" Gwen's Welsh accent sliced brutally through the rich tones of the Master's murmurs. "You look a little freaked out."

The Doctor shook himself. The Master was dead and hallucinations would not bring him back. He had practically sacrificed the Time Lord for the safety of humanity and that would be entirely pointless if he failed to defend them now. He had to get it together.

"I'm fine," he said with a confidence he didn't feel. But when he turned to Gwen, he saw she had tears running down her face, trailing along the sides of the gas mask. "What's wrong?"

"I was just thinking about my boyfriend, Rhys. How he has no idea of what I do all day. He expects me to just come home and eat take-away and watch telly when I do this all day! I walk through ghost houses with aliens and watch my boss blow his brains out. I can't do it, I just can't!"

The Doctor took a sniff of the air, concentrating on the texture. In his distracted state he hadn't noticed the increase of chemicals. The air was rapidly becoming thick with hallucinogens and mood-altering compounds. "Gwen, get out."

The policewoman sniffled. "But…"

"Now! Go!"

Shocked at the Doctor's shouted orders, she ran from the room. Hopefully she would have the sense to get out of the house.

Reasserting his mental fortitude with a ruffling of his hair, the Doctor went deeper into the darkness. Although his night-vision was pretty fantastic, he still managed to whack his ankle against something solid. He cursed the gloom loudly and crudely. After he calmed down, he felt around for his obstacle – a small metal box. He went over it with the sonic screwdriver, then did it again when he couldn't believe the results. When the scan proved consistent, he brushed the thick layer of dust away (which wasn't easy, it clung). Sure enough, faint etchings on the case assured him he was holding the genuine article.

He sensed movement behind him. Bloody humans, they never knew when to stay away. Pocketing his screwdriver, he stood up, feeling a little lighter than he had so far in this hellhole. "Gwen, you'll never guess what I found. It's a Telepathic Energy Converter Unit. My one's been damaged, but this one is…"

_Mine._

The Doctor blinked slowly, then turned around to see who was in the basement with him. Oh, the suicide cloud.

Brilliant.

QQQQQ

Jack woke slowly in his warm bed, trying not to let his dream slip from his mind. It had been the best dream ever. He and Ianto got a little frisky at a nude picnic on one of the Morsnok planets, while the Doctor had watched them with his gorgeous eyes. And all the time that Jack fucked Ianto, he'd looked over at the Doctor as if to say 'this could be you beneath me. You could feel as good as he does right now.' And eventually the Doctor had crawled over to them and asked, in such a shy voice, 'Jack, would you make love to me please?'

Just as he was getting somewhere though, the strange landscape of Morsnok started to darken and Ianto had turned into that weird tentacled creature from Jack's nightmarish hallucination. No way was he getting back to sleep now.

He did feel well-rested and ready for action. That was something, at least. The Doctor had… wait…

Jack looked around the room, his heart starting to race. Where was the Doctor? He'd promised to stay!

The Captain was halfway up his ladder before self-awareness kicked in and he realised that this was residual anxiety from his encounter with the suicide chemicals from earlier. It would be unprofessional and completely idiotic to let this feeling of desperation have complete control over him. So he climbed back down into his room and slowly put on a shirt and a pair of shoes. Staying calm, that was the key.

Once he looked presentable, he climbed out into the main area of the Hub. He spotted Ianto, Owen and Toshiko, but not the man he was looking for. Ianto put down the file he was carrying and jogged over to his Captain's side. "Are you alright? The Doctor said you were sound asleep and it hasn't even been two hours yet."

"Where is he?"

"He's gone with Gwen to research a lead on the case. It looks like whatever is leaving these chemicals is living under the street, so they've gone to check it out. Apparently it's a gaseous entity that may be secreting the chemicals accidentally."

Jack's heart was pounding, but he kept his composure on the surface. "You just let them go? Alone?"

"Well he didn't want to do things the 'Torchwood Way'," Owen sneered from his desk. "Personally I find that a little suspicious. I mean, he is Torchwood, isn't he?" Jack didn't respond. "Isn't he?!?"

"I don't have time for this right now, Owen. When did they leave?"

But before Toshiko could tell him, Owen slammed his hands on the table and stormed over to Jack. "We've got enough of the mystery shit from you, we don't need some complete stranger taking control of the team every other mission! Who the bloody hell is he, Jack?"

"Calm down, Owen," Ianto said, possessing too much sense to try to put a hand on the man's shoulder. "It's the Doctor. He saved the world last week, I don't think he'll let anything happen to Gwen."

Jack stared in disbelief at his on-off fuck buddy. "How the hell…?"

Ianto shrugged, as though his discovery was no big deal. "Piecing together the data on the Torchwood databases with the unofficial information you've given me over the year, it was quite easy to ascertain his identity. The uh… blue police box parked outside is a big hint, too."

"I thought the Doctor was our enemy," Toshiko said, looking worried.

"No. He was the enemy of the old Torchwood, but we have nothing to fear. I've already explained to you all about Yvonne Hartman's inexcusable lust for power and the consequences. She forced the Doctor to oppose Torchwood. She introduced Torchwood as his enemy. Luckily, me and the Doctor are old friends so I was able to talk him around to the new aims and objectives of Torchwood. He understands that we're here to defend rather than expand."

"Well he didn't seem very understanding when he yelled at us and stormed out," Owen said. "He threw a hissy fit about us using weapons and hostility against aliens then ran off to have a chat with the creature of doom."

"Well he _is_ a pacifist," Jack said with a shrug. "Which is why we need to protect him. Ianto?"

"Sir?"

"Fetch me the Crystalliser from storage. Be careful."

"Yes sir."

"And I'll need to borrow your car."

A faint sigh. "Yes sir."

QQQQQ

Jack screeched to a halt outside the 'death house' and was slightly alarmed to see Gwen sitting outside crying. He barely remembered to put the handbrake on before rushing out of the car, the Crystalliser in his hand. When she saw him approach, Gwen got to her feet and ran over. "Jack, are you alright?"

"Never better. What happened?"

"The gas mask wasn't completely protecting me," she explained. "I was getting really depressed so the Doctor sent me out here to recover."

"But he's still in there?" Jack asked, too concerned to notice she had said the Doctor rather than Doctor John Smith.

"He said he wasn't affected by it."

"I'm going in after him." He double-checked the Crystalliser's settings. It was a gun-like contraption that effectively froze whatever you fired it at, turning it into a crystallised object. Torchwood had commandeered it from a group of college students who were using it for pranks and inadvertently killing their class mates. They hadn't realised the process was irreversible. The objects didn't become frozen like ice, they became solid and fragile like glass. It wasn't a case of simply melting or thawing them. And it even worked on gases, though you had to be very careful with the gun's settings, or you could end up solidifying the room's oxygen permanently and rendering it completely uninhabitable. The Crystalliser was definitely not a toy.

"Take a mask," Gwen cautioned him, pulling off her breathing mask and putting it over his face. "I don't know if it will protect you for long down there though, the gases are really potent."

"This won't take long," Jack insisted, then slammed open the front door with unnecessary force. He hurried to the basement door and ran down the stairs, where the air seemed to hold a faint green glow.

"Doctor?"

He soon saw the Time Lord. Illuminated by the presence of the glowing, green entity, the Doctor looked ill. He was sat on a small metal box and he seemed utterly unhappy. He didn't look up when Jack called, although that could be in part due to the muffling effects of the mask. The cloud moved though, starting to drift towards Jack.

He fired the crystalliser.

Crystal swept along the cloud like some kind of weird flamethrower. The creature was much larger than its visible part and the crystal took up over half of the room when it stopped spreading. Then, very slowly, the frozen cloud started to tilt one way. It sped up as it fell, hitting the floor hard. The fractures spread over the whole crystal formation, then it exploded into tiny snow-like pieces.

Once he was certain the creature would not rebuild, Jack rushed to the Doctor's side. "Doctor, are you okay? Can you hear me?" When there was no response from the Time Lord, Jack knelt down before him so he could better look into those deep, brown eyes. "Doctor, please talk to me. Tell me you're alright!" Jack could feel the anxiety building. He'd already lost the Doctor once today, he wasn't doing it again! "DOCTOR!"

The Doctor gasped as if jolted from a daydream and blinked rapidly before focusing on Jack. "Oh, hello." It lacked his usual cheer.

Jack tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a sob. "You worried me there. What happened?"

The Doctor looked at the scattered remains of the suicide alien. "It was a Nureeq. Far from home. It didn't mean any harm."

"And I didn't want to hurt it." Jack shrugged. "How much easier life would be if we only ever had to hurt who we wanted to." His thoughts flitted briefly to Ianto.

"I was talking to it for a while. It wanted friends. It didn't even know why they kept dying. It thought they were performing some strange human ritual. It didn't know it was killing them. I thought I could resist the chemicals long enough to explain the situation to it, but apparently not."

The Doctor didn't seem to be exhibiting the same symptoms as all the human victims, but still Jack had to ask. "You're not going to kill yourself, are you?"

"No. If I'm still alive after everything that's happened, I'm hardly likely to take my own life now."

"Did you hallucinate?"

"In a sense. I relived things."

Jack could only imagine the horrors the Doctor had lived through. To have to go through it all again, that must have been hell. "But you didn't see anything new?" There was a silver lining in the cloud, at least.

The Doctor laughed, a hysterical, miserable sound.

"What more could I possibly lose?"

Jack let his heart break in silence.


End file.
